Hi Fellow Fabos,
Ever since I got my 65 Dart on the road, braking has been an issue, it had a good, solid pedal but required a great deal of physical effort to stop and stopping while moving in reverse was simply a joke. I should mention, that it is a 4-wheel, 9 in. drum, single reservoir manual-master setup. The brakes were not making any noise or grinding, they simply refused to stop the car.
Pulling the rear drums we found that the trailing shoe was wearing heavily on the outside and hardly at all on the inside. So we replaced the shoes. We set it back down, fired it up and moved it.... and there was absolutely no change in braking. Lifted it back up, pulled the front apart, and found perfect and minimal wear on all shoes, but noticed that the retainers for the shoes were dissimilar from the ones on the rear.
On the front end, the retainers were springs that reached through a hole in the shoe and hooked on to a small clip inserted from behind the backing plate.
On the rear, the shoes were retained by the "Nail, spring and cup" typically seen on GM products. A packet of "spring and clip" retainers was included with the shoes, but this being our first A-body, we were baffled as to their application... We thought it was one of those multi-application "kit bundles".
We figured since the front-end used those type of retainers and were wearing as they should, we pulled the rear end apart again and replaced those "GM looking retainers" with the spring and clip version.
Problem solved!
Moral: Never assume the parts you find on the car actually belong there. :violent1:
P.S. I picked up an original service manual and found that only the 9in. drums use the "spring and clip" retainers. The 10in. and 11in drums have the "GM" type retainers.
Live and Learn.
Ever since I got my 65 Dart on the road, braking has been an issue, it had a good, solid pedal but required a great deal of physical effort to stop and stopping while moving in reverse was simply a joke. I should mention, that it is a 4-wheel, 9 in. drum, single reservoir manual-master setup. The brakes were not making any noise or grinding, they simply refused to stop the car.
Pulling the rear drums we found that the trailing shoe was wearing heavily on the outside and hardly at all on the inside. So we replaced the shoes. We set it back down, fired it up and moved it.... and there was absolutely no change in braking. Lifted it back up, pulled the front apart, and found perfect and minimal wear on all shoes, but noticed that the retainers for the shoes were dissimilar from the ones on the rear.
On the front end, the retainers were springs that reached through a hole in the shoe and hooked on to a small clip inserted from behind the backing plate.
On the rear, the shoes were retained by the "Nail, spring and cup" typically seen on GM products. A packet of "spring and clip" retainers was included with the shoes, but this being our first A-body, we were baffled as to their application... We thought it was one of those multi-application "kit bundles".
We figured since the front-end used those type of retainers and were wearing as they should, we pulled the rear end apart again and replaced those "GM looking retainers" with the spring and clip version.
Problem solved!
Moral: Never assume the parts you find on the car actually belong there. :violent1:
P.S. I picked up an original service manual and found that only the 9in. drums use the "spring and clip" retainers. The 10in. and 11in drums have the "GM" type retainers.
Live and Learn.
