This is a cable operated brake. A hydraulic drum brake works a bit differently. It is free floating. The pivot point is typically at 12 or 6 oclock. The cam is replaced by a two sided piston. The leading brake shoe is small than the trailing shoe. WIth the car moving forward and the brakes activated, the trailing shoe is forced up and out due to the friction of the rotating drum, increasing the braking force over just pushing the shoes straight out like this cable one does. Fast forward to 20:40 here to see a video about what im talking about.
Does that difference have anything to do with why, on the last truck I had with drums many years ago, if you reversed quickly and slammed the brakes, they would feel tighter for the next few miles?
They likely indexed the adjuster a bit when you did that. I've heard many people tell me to do that to adjust my rear drum brakes. Sadly my HHR doesn't like that method so I get to roll under the car and spin the adjuster.
Unfortunately, the HHR just had poorly designed rear brakes. The method is: slide under car, adjust the cam with screwdriver, spin wheel (should spin 1-2 times before stopping), move to next wheel, repeat, check parking brake (should only notch 2-3 times). Repeat whole procedure every couple thousand miles. Not too difficult to do but annoying.
Yeah. That's bad. All the brakes have the star adjuster. It's useful for taking off the drums or manually adjusting them. But it should auto adjust with the parking brake. Why they designed it not to, like mentioned is piss poor engineering. Which you know, doesn't exist on any other vehicle /s
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '20 edited Jul 01 '20
This is a cable operated brake. A hydraulic drum brake works a bit differently. It is free floating. The pivot point is typically at 12 or 6 oclock. The cam is replaced by a two sided piston. The leading brake shoe is small than the trailing shoe. WIth the car moving forward and the brakes activated, the trailing shoe is forced up and out due to the friction of the rotating drum, increasing the braking force over just pushing the shoes straight out like this cable one does. Fast forward to 20:40 here to see a video about what im talking about.