Brake drum with shim

B

barnnone51

Member
I got my brakes back from Randy Gross which were like new.. Beautiful Job
the driver side rear drum was hitting the backing plate so Randy sent some shims.
I put one in and now the drum does not go all the way in. there is a gap between the drum and backing plate. Any advise would be great.. I am going to pull off the drum tomorrow and try without shim to see if it is still rubbing.
If it is still rubbing ? Thanks George
 
I purchased shims from 2 vendors and they were very different in thickness. You have the option of buying some shim stock and making your own shims. You can make a paper pattern first, cutting the shim stock is easy.

You may need a thinner shim than what you have. But as said above, I would call Randy first.
 
Call Randy, but you could remove the shim and grind some off the rear face of the drum to prevent it from hitting the backing plate. Have you checked the backing plate for being bent?? Do both drums hit the backing plates?? If not try swapping them. FWIW
Paul in CT
 
Thanks for all the information. I talked with Randy and told me might need to grind down
the drum. Well After the Jack leg Shade Tree Mechanic being me took off the shim and
installed the drum it was hitting. Pulled it off again put the shim in and installed the drum
it fit like a dream. The brakes work very well need to adjust some more have a little pulling to the right. Not sure what I was doing wrong but its all good now. Thanks Again for all the input .. And Thanks Marshall for the message.
 
Just to be clear, the brake drums that George had and we sent back to him, were his cast iron drums. We did not replace them with our cast iron drums. We cleaned them up and blasted them so that he could repaint them and make them look as good as new. We did turn them just a hair so that they were completely round. We did notice that some of the inner parts of his brake shoes were rubbing against his drums. There was some cast flashing in the drums that could have interfered with the shoes. We did not remove the flashing as we did not know how thick the drum was in the area of the flashing. We did mention this to George while doing the work and suggested either putting a axle shim on to pull the drum out a little further or take s small grinder (such as a Dremel) and remove the flashing. It looks like the shim did the job of clearing this area and at the same time opening the gap between the drum and backing plate.

Thanks
Randy Gross
 
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