My wifes 95 Accord was getting a sometimes soft pedal, not squish to the floor, but kind of soft on occasion and they were doing the 'grab let go, grab let go' feel last time i drove it. I was told rear drums will cause a slightly soft pedal at times if they are really worn.

So .. here in goes the insanity.

I got some rear brake shoes and tossed them in, I have everything exactly were it was (i am no n00b to the rear shoe/drum replacements). I loosened the ebrake line slightly, and I closed up the gap via the adjuster gear so the two clevis's have no gap between them.

The drums will not go back on, I need approx. 3-4 millimeters for them to slide right on. They are so close its sad.

Please don't say 'well just slide it up/down this way that way'.

I cannot make the shoes any tighter together than they already are to provide the space for the drum.

I guess what i'm looking for is some accord trick that I might have over looked, trolled the forums for hours, and sure there's billions of threads on the rear drum to disc conversion. But hey, its my wifes commuter car, with 180k on it.

No idea what is wrong, i've never had this problem in the maybe fifty odd times i've done rear drums/shoes. I even went as far as to double check the part numbers on the new shoes and drums, they are right.

 

The adjuster has a stepped fork on the end that touches the large cable lever. If you have that piece rotated 180 degrees, the step won't fit properly and cause this. This may be keeping the shoes from collapsing all the way.

Or, maybe the drums shrunk while you had them off.

 

Yea, the clevis that goes into the e-brake side is stepped fork on the end. I do believe I put it on the same way it came off, logically just by looking at it you can tell which way it goes. Actually I think I tried both ways at some point in my frustration. There is a small gap were it seems like it should be snugger on the ebrake side, but the other direction seemed much worse.

Currently the best I can describe it is the 'longer' side of the stepped fork is facing outwards. I guess it could be the wrong way, I suppose I should jack up the other side and take a peak which way it goes.

This brake job is killing me slowly. In my 17 years of changing brakes out (since i was 15 with my dad. yea do the math i'm old), discs/drums on all kinds of cars (saturns, hondas, fords, chevys, etc), never once did I run into this.

I had better invest in some rogaine, feels like i'm going to need it soon if this brake fiasco keeps up.

btw; thanks for the good idea phootbag, just by looking at it, I kind of had a hunch the problem was dealing with the clevis in some fashion, its the only piece of hardware that is keeping the tops of the shoes from coming any closer together. I can squeeze the wheel cylinders in but the shoes won't follow suit on the top side.

 

And one more, I did the other side tonight after work, same exact thing. I checked which direction the clevis end was when i pulled off the drum, and it was correct on the other side I had been working on earlier so thats right.

Infact the other side which I hadn't disassembled looked exactly like the side I did Also took measurements after I spun down the star nut on the side I hadn't taken apart(the shoes were gone so the clevis was expaned out all the way). And wouldn't you know, the damn measurements were equal to the mm compared to the side I had already done. I had no way of measureing it to the edge of the shoe as the old shoe's were so worn down. But from one side to the other, with both collapsed the measurements are the same for sure.

So how does this work, did they have a bad run of shoes? Were they miss boxed for and older accord? Its a friggen mystery scooby doo.

What I am going to try, is a different brand shoe, and get new drums.

I dont know why new drums would fix it, as they should have the same measurement tolerances as the OEM drums. Even if they wore funny, the jist is at the point they were put on, they fit over fresh shoes. So I don't know why that would work but I guess it's worth a try.

So status as of now, both sides are having the same ($*@#)ing problem.

 

Would you call me "Captain obvious" if I said something isn't right?

 

No I wouldn't at all. I knew something wasn't right from about 1.5hrs into just one side, as normally i'd be driving around adjusting them at that point.

Like I said, I pulled the other side tire off, looked at it, took measurements, etc etc, and it was *identical* to the other side. With the exception of the worn to metal shoes on the old side.

I also grabbed the drums from my friend at the parts store, guess what, brand new drums won't slide over either, they are a hair closer, but not quite.

So does this sound insane or not...
I am going to take in the drums and have them turned in order to shave a the few millimeters i need off the inside.



And heres my checklist....

1. Clevis's are turned the correct direction.
2. Star nut is adjusted *all* the way in.
3. Shoes are seated properly and snug.
4. All the hardware is correct. Double checked with otherside and real shop manual quite a few times.

If you want I can snap some pictures and toss them up. I might do that anyway for prosperitys sake, god know someone else I'm sure will have the same problem, and it'd be nice for them to figure out how to fix it with out spending eight hours taking apart, re-assembling just one side.

 

If you could take some really good close up pictures showing the points where the clevis meet the shoes, where the shoes meet the wheel cylinder, where the shoes meet the lug on the bottom of the backing plate ( the pivot point on the bottom of the shoes ) and the parking brake lever ( the point where the cable attaches to the lever and the point where the lever attaches to the shoe.

I would not oversize the drums. There is likely a problem that needs to get fixed or the system may be unreliable.