More Brakes

Sunday we were in Rochester and I stopped by the Pep Boys. They had none of the brake parts, nor were they able to match up any wheel studs.

Monday:

Opened up the front drums. Interesting setup with an axle nut holding the wheel bearing together up there. Especially since the left one is a left hand thread and they have some sort of socket cap metric screw to lock that nut and my left one is not here.

Front drums looked a lot better than the rears. Me thinks not letting them sit in mud helps.

Shoes look usable.

Hardware seems to be usable.

Cylinders... One piston moved. The other broke. The other side acted like it might have been salvageable, but if I'm replacing one, I'll just replace both fronts.

Found the speedo cable hookup(I think) out of the left front hub. No idea if there's still something usable in there. That will be later.

Decided might as well try again on that right rear drum. I tried getting the chevy adapter off, though it's not as critical on the back drums. I don't really "need" it off at the moment. I broke another (my last) 3/8-1/2" adapter and about 3 or 4 14mm sockets.

Decided to go for broke on the axle nut. I looked again to make sure I wasn't missing a cotter pin in there somewhere, then jammed the pry bar in the wheel against the frame again. Pounded it in a touch to try to keep it in place better. Tried the 3' breaker bar in both directions but no movement i could tell. I briefly tried a hammer and punch on the nut, but that didn't look too promising either. Let's go for broke.

Put the 3-4' pipe extension on the 3' breaker bar and just about jumped on the end of it waiting for SOMETHING to crack. Was rather expecting it to be the breaker bar. But no, it finally cracked and the it was the nut the moved a bit. It got gradually easier and it did finally come off.

Surprisingly for some reason that this nut is rusted solid on, whereas the left is nice and hand turnable, yet the left side drum was half full of frozen mud and crap and this right one had relatively little. Though the right side backing plate seems more rusted through. But i believe the important structural bits are ok.

Later, I pulled the pry bar out and realized I had seriously bent it. Oops. Well, better it than the car.

Looked some more at prices and locations of brake parts. Finally just tried to send the list to Napa and have them send me all 4 wheel cylinders and rear shoes and hardware. It puked at the end so I figure I might as well call them. They didn't seem to know much about the internet, but put in the order.