Wheel cylinder replacement

[scirockirb]

I noticed a puddle of brake fluid under my rear wheel over Xmas and I've only just got round to sorting the wheel cylinder.

As the car had been sat for a year before I acquired it, I thought I'd treat it to a drum refurbishment.

I've got as far as trying to undo the Allen screws from the back of the cylinder and one of them has rounded out.

Has anyone got any tricks to get this out within the limited space?

[Nate]

first thing you need to do is scrape the dirt out before you try and undo them, not doing this will almost guarantee that you round one out.

once you have rounded them out, the easiest way is to drill them out. look at your replacement, you'll see the hole the bolt goes into goes all the way thru. look at the old one, locate the end of the offending bolt, punch the centre and drill it out with a nice sharp 5mm bit, making sure you stay straight. use the drill on a low speed.

replacement ones often only have 1 bolt. this is fine.

[scirockirb]

Cheers Nate,

The new ones have only got one so that's a result I suppose.

I'll clean the other side before I try and undo them! Haha

[Nate]

you might be able to remove the rounded one by scraping out the dirt, then tapping a slightly too large torx or spline bit into it

[scirockirb]

I'll give that a try first... Cheers

[mark1gls]

Just checking you are fitting new brake shoes as well if the old ones ore covered in brake fliud?
If the other old Allen head bolts are worn or starting to round off its worth replacing them and when putting the new Allen bolts back in I smear a little copper grease on the threads to stop them rusting on.

[scirockirb]

I am... I bought a full refurbishment kit.

[mark1gls]

Is that the kit from ebay? If so let us know what you think of it.

[Nate]

Refurbishment kit? Is that a posh way of saying new shoes and cylinder?

[marcus]

Proper kit (GSF sell them) includes all the springs and posts etc. Bugger to reassemble though, I resorted to buying various Sealey tools to help with the job, don't think I'd have managed without them.

[Nate]

The word "refurbish" is becoming very overused imho. Getting close to being as annoying as sales people who overuse the word "yourself" and supermarkets with the word "colleague"

Surely that's what you'd normally just call a service kit?

[scirockirb]

I bought the Heritage kit that is drums, shoes, springs, pins and cylinders... Pretty much everything except the back plates.

Now I've taken it apart, I'm glad I did as they were in a bit of a state... probably lack of use for some time.

[scirockirb]

Just found time to get back to this now... Removed the rounded out nut.

I'm trying to reconnect the handbrake cable... What's the best way to compress the spring to get thew lug through the bracket on the shoe?

A little bit of me wishes I paid someone to do this for me...

[marcus]

I used these, very useful though still a fiddly job, took me several goes.

[scirockirb]

Thanks for that... I wondered if there'd be a specific tool. It is fiddly, the whole job is in general.