Right hand thread/left hand thread 68 charger????, pressed on drums?????help!!!!!!

7duce swinger said

Thats the thing 74dart, the wheels were barely put on about two months ago, which is why i asked why they would be so gosh damn stuck.?? It was hard as heck, to take everything off the car. So they thought it would keep them from coming off?? Hmmm, so they were thinking because of the rotation of the wheels, the lugs would come off? Thanks, ill let my bro-in-law know, since he thinks its the dumbest thing ever done to cars lol.

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Actually, it's not as dumb as you think. All the big three did it. Ford and GM just bailed on it before Chrysler did. Hell, I've even run across some modern pop-up campers where the lugs are still left hand thread on the left side.

Now would be the time - since you've had to kill one of the lugs to get the wheel off - to go ahead and swap that corner to right hand studs and nuts.

As for the grooves in the axle register get those cleaned off. They ain't supposed to be there. Could be one of the reason the drums were stuck. Maybe not, but even then, take a file, some emery cloth, hell, even 80 grit sandpaper and get the pilot register clean again.

One of the other reasons the drums might have been hard to get off is because a ridge on the drum just outside the shoe contact area. As you pull past the shoes this ridge can hang up on the shoes themselves and tighten everything back up, even if the adjusters are all the way in. Time to take the drums to a good brake shop or machine shop and have 'em cut since you have 'em off.

Before you put 'em back on run the adjusters all the way in, slam the drums on, then reach through the backing plate with the proper spoon (a screwdriver will work, but since you're bro-in-law owns a drum brake car, it's a wise investment to have brake spoons) and tighten the brakes til you just feel a drag when rotating the tires.