Brake shoe replacement

["Aaron Ness" <aaron@makuta.com>]

I replaced the brake shoes and wheel cylinders on my '82 last night.  3
hours of chilly grime, but now that my '84 is gone, I have a garage.

A blown wheel cylinder has detrimental effects on braking performance, and
as it turns out, two blown cylinders *severely* limit braking response.
Don't ask me how I know...

I found that the information given in the manual regarding installation of
the brake shoes is a complete joke.  I think Bentley actually agrees with
Haynes, which says to put the shoes on the wheel cylinder, install the lower
spring, and fit the shoes into the lower support.  Right.  Am I missing
something here?  I tried that, and the front shoe kept falling off of the
wheel cylinder.  I finally took the spring off, installed the shoes, and
then pulled with the hook on my brake spring pliers to muscle the spring
into place to the point that it barely hooked on the edge of the hole, and
then I hit it with a hammer to make it pop into the hole.  Once I figured
that out, the other side went pretty fast.

Is there supposed to be some kind of tool to easily pull the spring back to
expose the parking brake cable?  That thing was a pain to get hooked into
the lever on the rear shoe.

Aaron
'82 Scirocco
'70 Beetle
'87 Jeep Cherokee 4.0
'81 Honda CX500


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