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I have an 02 Taurus that had non-functioning rear drum brakes. After watching Eric’s videos I felt emboldened to do my first brake job in over 25 years. The drums were rusted on pretty good, one of them I had to tap from the rear with a sledge hammer, being careful not to do any damage to the rear of the wheel unit. Of course, this was after tapping for 30m on the front of the drum after dousing the lugs with some WD-40. Anyway, long story short, I have disassembled the driver side rear brake assembly only to find the star wheel adjuster totally rusted solid. Instead of mucking around with cleaning and trying to free it up, I just figured it best to replace those along with the springs, pads and drums. My question is this, should I also replace the piston (or slave cylinder, whatever you want to call it)? I used a whole can of brake cleaner to clean off this wheel assembly. I’ve provided a picture for your reference. From what I have researched, one doesn’t want to push on the brake pedal to see if the piston is functioning but if you don’t do that, then how does one test it to verify it’s working properly? Do you put the assembly together and then test? Then if ti’s bad disassemble everything and then replace it? If I should replace that too are there any recommended best practices, pictures, videos to educate me on that process?
Thanks in advance for your assistance with this and sorry for the long post.
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If the “wheel cylinder” is bad you will see evidence of it leaking. If you did not see any evidence of fluid, and the rubber boots aren’t torn, than it’s fine. A good rule of thumb is to do one side at a time. That way if you are doing the driver’s side, and forget how it went back together, you can use the passenger side as a reference.
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