Hi
I bought some Wolseley front and rear brakes a few weeks ago - the fronts look OK, but the rears look like they need an overhaul.
I've never worked on drums before, so can someone please shed some light on exactly what I need to do to overhaul them?
They all look OK to me except the return springs are wrong in your pic of the rears. It should be inside the shoes as in the fronts pic. Clean everything with brake cleaner and make sure the pistons slide in the cylinders OK. Lubricate with red brake grease and fit - Simples !
[sig]8426[/sig]
Compare the Minors - Simples !! http://mog.myfreeforum.org/index.php
Well done! The fronts fit straight on, the rears look fine (apart from the spring noted earlier) - but do test them by pulling the lever. To fit them - you 'may' need to modify the handbrake cable attachment - it's ~ 45 years since I did this! OR - you could drill new mounting holes at 45 degrees to the originals - this will put the operating cylinder exactly where the Minor one sits - and is what I 'plan' to do - when I finally get round to fitting my rears.
As I say - the fronts are very easy less than 1 hr per side - but the rears maybe not so easy so allow a bit of time in case of snags. But they DO go on - I did it back in ~ 1965 - just can't remember if there were any snags. The likely one is that the handbrake cable is fixed to the spring base - but the W brake cylinder is up in the air - not opposite the cable grip.
When I put the W brakes on the Healey I had binding problems on new drums. Maybe it was the new drums being a tad too small or maybe it was the fact that I used new M1000 shoes. Not sure. Anyway, the M1000 shoes are designed to fit 2 of those snail adjusters rather than having one snail and one flat end as per the original W shoes. Having the extra cut-out for the extra snail might muck about with the dynamics of the brake shoe movement. Does this make sense? the problem was solved with a set of NOS Wolseley shoes for about 50% more cost than the M1000 ones.
I think the rear brake cylinder is long enough to make up for the lack of one snail! Although I must say - I would fit the non-snail shoe the other way round..........
If you can - get new W shoes. Trouble is - some have reported that the shoes available now do not have the same braking power (ie coeff of friction) as the original (asbestos!) shoes. So - don't discard the old shoes - you may need them!
