wombosi

Friend has a '93 Civic VX which he just bought. 175K miles. Runs fine.

He and I just removed the rear drum to replace shoes and hardware after his mechanic told him he needed new rear brakes.

Much to our horror, the innards of the rear brake system look like they have never been touched in the life of the car. The piston looks very corroded, and only one shoe moves when brake is applied.

The inner lip of the "housing," (not sure what this is actually called) is cracked in some places, looks like water can easily come in. Does this need to be replaced?
Does the piston need to be replaced?

In any case, the shop forgot to give us the hardware kit, so we couldn't do the job.

We're now wondering whether or not to let the mechanic do the entire job. He quoted my friend $475 to do the back brakes and fix the ebrake with two new cables, but we're not sure exactly what he would be replacing.

If it's easy enough to replace the entire housing and pistons, we'd probably do it ourselves.

I myself have experience in just replacing shoes and hardware, which I am now pretty good at, but I feel the other things are beyond my reach.
Could this be learned relatively easily?

Here's a link to pictures we just took of the brakes.
http://dynamitetraining.com/brakes

Thanks Ben and Jake.

RIZOBIZERT

For $475 you could easily do a disc conversion. Check out the search and get rid of the drums. If you really want to stick with the drums, you need shoes, drums, pistons. I think the piston is only about $5-10 each, drums and shoes shouldn't be to bad, but hey, why not improve the system with discs. As for the hole, I don't see it in the pics so I won't comment.

Syndacate

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RIZOBIZERT &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">For $475 you could easily do a disc conversion. Check out the search and get rid of the drums. If you really want to stick with the drums, you need shoes, drums, pistons. I think the piston is only about $5-10 each, drums and shoes shouldn't be to bad, but hey, why not improve the system with discs. As for the hole, I don't see it in the pics so I won't comment. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Drums work fine if you know how to use them.

Ever wonder why heavy load trucks use drums over disks??

The only thing that's worse about drums is they lock easier - so expletive a disk conversion.

@ OP:
New wheel cylinder, shoes, drum, and e-brake for each side.

Everything should be peachy after that.

If it's as bad as you claim it is - might wanna throw top shoe spring, bottom shoe spring, adjuster spindle, adjuster, and adjuster spring.

They should be 100% after that.

Replace:
5
10
11
23
24
9

You should be fine - the adjuster spindle usually doesn't go bad...the adjuster is just a piece of metal...

As for the e-brake

12
8

You should be peachy after that.

If you really have no idea what you're doing then take it to a mech - or at least have a mech or somebody with drum knowledge look over it b4 you put it back together - it's not rocket science, though.

wombosi

thanks fellas.
syndacate: i also noticed the spindles hardly spin without alot of force. does the indicate need for new wheel bearings?

what kind of job is it to rethread new ebrake cables?