[TR] Brake Assembly Questions

[CarlSereda at aol.com]

Hi Andy,
I would recommend some sort of carefully applied grease to rear brake 
shoe-seats. You should see my worn-out original TR4 brake backing plates! The brake 
shoe 'rests' are quite worn down.. counter-intuitive to lubing them when 
reshoeing, I always left them clean. Excessive wear in these seats resulted in an 
'un-square' orientation to the drum surface when shoes at rest - this required 
over-compensating the adjusters to clear the crooked shoes from rubbing the 
drums, and in turn, added to my 'pedal travel' to get them back up against the 
drum-face when braking. Ok, maybe 15 thousandths of added shoe clearance only 
creates 1/8 inch more pedal travel - mostly I didn't like struggling with the 
adjusters to MINIMIZE drum gap with CROOKEDY shoes!
It took at least a year to find 2 replacement TR4 backing plates with better 
seats (thanks Joe A) so now I have purchased some CRC 'Brake Lube' (two 1/4oz 
squeeze tubes per card) for about $4 at a well stocked auto shop. This package 
recommends lubing the shoe seats and other 'wear points' ie; springs, 
linkages, parking bits, etc. 
This CRC brake grease smells/looks just like old fashioned translucent 
orange/yellow type of grease - not sure if high temp or not. 
Backing plates can wear out of spec, and good replacement plates are really 
hard to find, so I'll be adding a dab of grease to my shoe-seats, here on out.
Regards,
Carl
'63 TR4 since '74

==AM==
I'll pretty much go along with this. Personally, I've always used white  
lithium grease (I still have half of the can I bought over 30 years ago!) 
where  
needed. Mostly where I've found it was "needed" was on any/all parts of the  
adjuster, and on the backing plate and wheel cylinder surfaces that contact  
same, so that it will slide properly (which it must be able to do), and 
wherever  
the handbrake lever pivot points might be (wheel cylinder and clevis pin or  
other connection to the cable). But that's about it. I've never seen any  
particular benefit to lubing the shoe ends...or even where the shoes touch the
  
backplate. But that's me.... ;-)  
--Andy   Mace<BR><BR><BR>**************<BR>Ideas to please picky eaters. 
Watch video on AOL Living.<BR>      
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