Strange rear brake drums

[Michele Pensotti]

Hi all, I just wanted to share something that I think it’s not too usual that I discovered some days ago when working on my Citroen AX rear brakes.

I had just rewatched some of Eric’s rear brakes videos so I felt ready for anything B) and , when I removed the wheel I went straight ahead by whacking the drum with a hammer, then with a big hammer, and it still didn’t budge.

At this time I felt a little lost, it wasn’t going as planned!

Then I started using my own brain (sometimes it works 😆 ) and took a good long look at the drum, and noticed the center cap , which was the only remaining thing left to explore; I removed it with a drift punch and a small hammer, and it revealed its secrets 😆

Under the cap there is the hub nut and a lot of dirty old grease!

After removing the dirty old grease, inside , besides the nut, there was a Seeger clip (or should I call it a C-Clip?) , which I removed, even though it wasn’t necessary. I believe its there to hold the bearing in.

C-Clip (Seeger Clip?) holding the bearing

And finally, with a little pulling out, the drum came out of the shaft and I could finally access the inner mechanism. :cheer:
So the rear drums in this car are not held in by the wheel nuts (and lots of rust 😉 ), but by the hub nut itself; I had never seen this configuration in Eric’s videos, so I thought it could be interesting to share this with all of you 🙂

Speaking of the inner mechaninsm, it was completely soaked with brake fluid; as you can see the right rubber boot that protects the wheel cylinder has been blown out by the fluid’s pressure. :ohmy:

Wheel cylinder blown out and rear brake soaked with brake fluid!

Since I hadn’t foreseen this need, I hadn’t ordered any part of the brake, so I cleaned everything ( especially the brake shoes which were soaked too :sick: ) the best I could with brake cleaner and some rags and re-assembled it (and passed the inspection anyway! :woohoo: )

Now I’ll need to order the brake kit and also some spare hub nuts since the ones I have are quite battered.

When I go around it again I’ll post an update! :cheer:

Live long and prosper (and stay dirty!)

10nico

Topic

[Kevin Criswell]

Ahh Old VW Beetles and Super Beetles have the same exact setup. If you need to change the bearings and races you can drive the old ones out (races) and drive new ones in easily.

[Michele Pensotti]

Very interesting, I didn’t know Beetles had that kind of setup too 🙂

Thank you for this information! 😉

Live long and prosper (and stay dirty!)

10nico

[EricTheCarGuy]

Anytime you see a dust cover in the center of the hub like that, remove it first to see what’s behind it. Thanks for the post and the pics. Nice work.

[Jamie]

I got into the habit a long time ago of having at least a pair of drum wheel cylinders hanging around for that very reason.

To go a step further VW used almost the same drum mech for quite a long time. There are definatly more simplified ways of doing it but it works, outside of the stupid auto adjusting wedge that worked off the parking brake.

[Author]

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