Went to remove a rear brake drum on my 1997 Silverado CK 1500 to measure the shoes that I’ll need, and there aren’t any access slots by an adjuster to draw the shoes in. There are two access slots on the back plate, but nothing that lines up with an adjuster. Any suggestions on how to adjust the shoes in to remove the drum ??
Don’t think you need to adjust the shoes to take the drums off. With a rubber mallet, hit the drum around the outer circumference. This should get the drum to start moving.
DO NOT USE A METAL HAMMER!!!
Make sure the parking brake is off too.
Use penetrating spray on the middle of the drum. If a metal bar will go through those access holes, and on to contact the drum, tap the drum off that way. Like the Japanese cars, drill two holes in the drum, for two screws, to screw into the drum and push again the hub, forcing the drum off. Use a large two-leg, or three-leg, puller. Use two large screwdrivers to “encourage” the drum to come off. If these fail, there are other suggestions.
I thank-you all very much for the replies. the drum wasn’t “frozen” against the hub, so it turned out to be a bit easier than I thought it would.
It turned out that the star wheel was actually up by the master cylinder, so, there wasn’t any way to access that.
The suggestion of using a piece of metal in the two access slots to drive tha drum out from behind was the one that I used.
Then , using gentle prying with a little crow-bar and light tapping with a small hand sledge-hammer did the trick of getting the drum off.
After all that, it turned out that there was still plenty of shoe left.
So, I cleaned off the rust, used a wire wheel to get rid of any glaze on the drum and shoe, adjusted the star wheel to get the drum back on, applied lubricant on the back plate as suggested on a GM site, and put it all back together.