Lina's been here before, a couple of times, and she's no more helpful than in her previous visits. Her basic research turns up factoids anyone could have learned and that most people who already knew the difference between drum and disc brakes could have told you:
"Drum brakes on GMC trucks are found on the rear wheels of modern models while older trucks may have drums on both the front and the rear wheels. Drum brakes are more difficult to replace than disc brakes. When replacing drum brakes, you change out the shoes in the drum brake."We know quite a few people who would argue that "Drum brakes are more difficult to replace than disc brakes"; but -- unlike Schofield -- they've actually done the job once or twice. Whatever the case, we'd expect at least a rudimentary discussion of the difference between disc and drum brakes, but none was forthcoming. FWIW, not all modern GMC trucks have rear drum brakes, some have discs on the rear -- but Lina's the "expert"... |
"Raise the rear end of your truck with the jack and set the jack stands under both sides of the rear axle."OK, assuming you happen to have a shop jack that lifts the entire rear end -- if you're a normal person with the OEM jack, you need to perform that one wheel at a time. Whatever. Once the lug nuts are off, Lina explains that you should
"Slide the rear wheels off the the truck and pull the brake drum off the hub."Wait: there are two rear wheels but only one drum? Huh? OK, now that that's done, Schofield wants you to "Locate the adjuster spring on the top half of the brake assembly. Remove the spring with the pliers and detach the retractor spring that links the shoes."Pliers? You want to bend or break that spring? You use a brake spring tool, Lina -- not a pair of pliers! Schofield then instructs her readers to |
"Slide out the rear-facing shoe manually, along with the adjuster lever and the assembly for the adjuster screw. Remove the parking lever from the brake shoe. Move the retractor spring to the side and remove the forward-facing shoe. Repeat the Steps 1 through 3 for the remaining wheel(s)."Besides the fact that people who've never done this job (including Schofield, our experts are sure) have no earthly idea what the parts mentioned here might look like, Lina makes an error in telling her readers to take apart both brakes at the same time (and a logical error by suggesting that there are more than two rear brake drums!). Even experienced mechanics leave one of the brakes intact so they have an example of how everything goes back together -- and a smart person takes a picture or two, just in case.
Once she's finished with her copy-reword-paste job, Lina tells readers to just put the wheels back on and drive off. Well, first she tells them to
"Lower your truck with the jack and remove the jack stands..."...which we figured would be a pretty neat trick. But we looked: there's no mention at all of evaluating the condition of the drum(s), shoes or wheel cylinder; lubricating the works; or -- most importantly -- bleeding the brake system when you're done. We don't know about you, but we'd rather not trust the stopping power of our truck to the kind of slapdash instructions our Dumbass of the Day published here. We like living (and having an undamaged truck).
¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was ehow.com/how_7566766_replace-drum-brakes-gmc-truck.html
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DDIY - BRAKES
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