Rear drum brakes - shoe strut - could help someone

Note to those wishing to save their time, this is more a confession than a question. Background, no I am not a professional mechanic.

2004 Prius - 233,200 miles - finally needs new rear drums (one was above spec) and shoes. I was noticing a metal to metal noise and also delay then thunk when breaking. I read the forum posts and I tried greasing the 6 grease points on the backing plate. No joy. Still had the thunk and metal scrapping noise.

I ordered the Centric kit of rock auto. I purchased the parking brake adjustment struts from Autozone. I bought dot 3 """synthetic""" fluid, the Prestone brand... I was ready for the day when I would get to the task.

Finally have a day off and a bit of time to get this time. I get into it and read the service manual steps, as I found most of the videos were not 100% thorough. Next, whenever I do any work of this nature, I go through all of the parts, make sure nothing was left out in shipment, and, when disassembling, I match parts up to ensure they are correct, as what was on the vehicle is factory OEM parts.

After going through the service manual and going through the parts, I'm ready to commit to the task. Long story short; I ended up redoing the job 4 times! Each time I redid it, it was because the parking brake was not setting. Also, after the second time, I noticed the adjustment wheel (star) wasn't moving. But I felt this was due to the automatic adjust lever not being positioned correctly. I had plenty of high temp grease on the screw part, so why wouldn't it turn??

Well, after the third time I asked myself, could it be that Autozone didn't package the part correctly? As it turned out, the parts were in the wrong packaging! I take the brake assemblies apart again and inspect the adjustment struts. Both are turned on so tight I had to use a vise to turn them apart. Really??!?! the adjustment strut parts were reversed as I went off the packaging label for each. This was a first for Autozone, as I have never had this type of problem prior with their parts.

Honestly, the real issue and lesson learned, is to check that when you turn the star wheel adjuster DOWN (from the inside through the oval access slot) that the screw expands. Or from the outside, with the drum off, you are able to click UP. This should be on BOTH sides -- star clicks down from inside! Better to check before putting drum on and check, the star should click UP.

After all this, I was able to adjust the brakes so there was a little bit of friction.

Is this over? I still find the parking brake doesn't hold on my hill of a driveway. I noticed it was taking about 15-16 clicks when pressing in the foot pedal of the parking brake to get it to go all the way. The forums posts here seem to concur that 9 clicks is where it should be. Given that I had adjusted the shoes to slightly touch the drum, I concluded that I must adjust the parking cable.

I make it so the pedal clicks 9 times. The car, while holding better, still rolls back on my driveway.

Is there a brake in period for shows and drums where this happens? I cleaned the shoes and drums with brake cleaner each time I took things apart and reassembled.

 

I am not sure I saw any one posting that, I must have missed that post... Glad I'm not the only one

probably 15-20% grade (about 30 feet long and 6 feet up) <- EDIT

I will get to that... I am going to test my "break-in period" idea for a week. If I have to put the car up again this weekend, I will !

 

I think what I was experiencing was a bit of aftermarket "goodness" and being a little impatient about breaking in the rear shoes. The car now holds on my hill and the braking feels good. I get about 10 clicks, so I am not going to back off the adjustment on the parking brake pedal, since that seems normal. All-in-all I would do it again and use the Centric parts. No, I'm not advertising for them. In fact, I would prefer to have the OEM parts, I used the OEM pads on the front brakes.

One more thing I wanted to point out and I am not sure I should make a new post as everything works fine now and I believe the answer is in the forum already. I used Techstream to complete the bleeding process since I changed the rear cylinders. It turned out I did the bleeding twice because I did the brake job about 3 times . I ran into codes using Techstream during bleeding and had to erase the codes and then redo the bleeding.

When bleeding right-rear brake got C1343. I am doing everything myself with a telescoping prop to hold brake. I get back to turn the bleeder about 3 seconds after that "click" you hear when running the bleeding. I got C1344 on the rear-left side brake one time too. I know my method of using my not so toyota issued telescoping prop for the brake and running back around to turn the bleeder isn't optimal, but it worked. But could my method, the delay of a few seconds, trigger the codes when bleeding? Eventually everything was bleed properly and no codes were produced...

Just wondering.

And thanks to those who commented, I do appreciate the comments. They are helpful.

 

Been a couple weeks, brakes work excellent, no issues with bleed, rock solid on my hill of a driveway with parking brake set. What finally got the parking brake to really clinch was I gave the rear adjustments 11 clicks on both sides, and since then it has been good. I do not hear brake noises like you might hear if over adjusted. I read in several places that with the Prius drum brakes not to make it drag at all when adjusting. I do not think that is true. I say for the initial adjustment, give it a few extra clicks.