rear drum is rusted to hub. hub bearing flange is 5.5" dia. could I drill an access hole thru drum at 6" dia B.C. to see edge of hub/flange and somehow get a wedge/pic into seam to apply leverage to get hub off? lots of pics online that show brake cylinder location so I know where stuff is inside. its all about leverage. new drum is $20. but why kill myself beating it off bearing flange?
Beating it off may wreck the bearing. I’d spray on penetrating oil (my favorite is PB Blaster) overnight and then use a brake drum puller. You may be able to rent one for free from Autozone or O’Reilly’s.
If you want to drill something, you might drill and tap the drum between the axle flange and the brake shoe and then make your own puller to strip out the threads you put into the drum, cuss out loud, and then rent the proper tool. 
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We can better help you if you give us the year, make, and model of the vehicle.
Many vehicles with drums have threaded holes in the drum intended to be used to drive bolts in to release the drum.
First, are you certain the brake shoes are released? Does the drum turn? If yes, I’d use a propane torch to get the drum hot, really hot. It gets hot when you use the brakes a lot, so it shouldn’t do any damage to get it nicely warmed up. Then whack it hard, on the side where the brake shoes rub, with a rubber mallet. It seems unlikely to me that you could damage the bearing with a rubber mallet.
If you crack it, my apologies, but you say a new one is $20. If it pops loose, you win no matter whether it cracks or not.
03 vue. No threaded holes. Drum turns fine. I tried pb blaster. Tried Mapp gas torch. No acty torch. Used big hammer. Drum has zero wiggle.
Yeah I think that was the best idea to check the parts stores to borrow a puller.
Have you used a wire wheel to clean up where the hub goes through the drum? Might help a little.
Loosen the lug nuts and drive it around the block until it breaks free of the rust.
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That’s an accident waiting to happen
No, I think he’s on to something. Don’t remove the nuts, just loosen them a bit, like 1/2 a turn. Maybe try just rolling it up and down the driveway, and stop hard once.
Isn’t that to remove a stuck wheel?
First off, this topic has been discussed here several times before, and there’s quite a few ideas presented in those prior threads. Ideas I’d never heard of, but seemed like they’d be pretty effective. Unfortunately I can’t remember what they all were … lol … but you can probably find them with the forum search feature.
If you decide to drill a hole, what you’d want to do I think it then tap the hole and screw a bolt into the hole to push the drum off the hub. You’d probably need to drill at least two holes, at 180 degrees apart. As long as you can drill the hole without damaging something and with minimum cussing, I think that would work. Make sure you start with a perfectly sharp drill bit to avoid the cussing part.
One of the frequent posters here as I recall mentioned they’d sometimes have to resort to cutting the stuck drum, then split it in two with a wedge presumably, to get it off. If you have the right cutting tool, that might well be the fastest method. Recently I had to cut through a 3/4 galvanized plumbing pipe. You know how long that would take with a hacksaw. No good. But with a bi-metal blade in a reciprocating saw, it took like 10-15 seconds.
I remember a real clever way to get off a frozen disk, but the drum discussions seem to concentrate on penetrating oil, heat, BIG hammers, maybe a puller, and cutting.
I was thinking “what if you had to make your own drum puller?” That might be a fun project. It would only have to work one time so some compromises are possible. What if you started with a piece of 2 x 12 douglas fir construction lumber, big enough it would make contact with all the studs. Then another piece of 2 x 12 lumber the same size over the top of the first piece, and attached to that two straps with an L-shaped strong metal hook at the ends to grab the drum. I have some straps with a hook like that in my junk pile I think. Then some bolts/washers/etc to push the outer piece away from the inner piece.
Here’s another idea for a diy brake drum puller. This one is easiler to make and use than my idea above I think. Whether it would work, not sure. It is a pretty inexpensive solution though, if it worked.
The idea is you start with one of those donut shaped work-out weights, you know the kind you put on each end of a bar to lift weights at the gym. Maybe a 6 -8 inch diameter version. Somehow attach three heavy duty metal rods at 120 degrees apart to the edge of the weight, so you end up with something sort of spider shaped, the rods being the legs. Fashion the other end of the rods as required so that they’ll grab hold of the back edge of the drum. Using some threaded rods, or maybe just some re-bar. The back edge of a typical brake drum has a little ledge there, right? So the legs could catch it.
Now to remove the drum you attach the legs to the back edge of the drum, then poke a 1/2 inch galvanized pipe through the hole in the middle of the weight, then thread a fitting on the end of the pipe bigger than the hole. Now pull hard on the pipe. You get a slide hammer effect to shock the drum off.
What do you think?
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