On econobox’s with front disc and rear drums, the rear shoes rarely need to be replaced, at least in comparison to the front pads. For example I just recently replaced the rear shoes on my 27 year old Corolla for the first time, w/well over 200 k miles on the clock. This all depends on the make/model/year and driving style of course. In my case I was hearing a little scraping noise from the rear when braking. I pulled the driver’s side rear drum and there was still plenty of material on the shoes. So I figured it was just rust making the noise. But the scraping noise was starting to get louder over the next few months so I pulled the drum on the other side. Sure enough the shoes on that side had reached their wear limit.
If you want to service drums – definitely a diy’er friendly task – you need some special (but relatively inexpensive) tools as posted above. Don’t try it without those tools on hand. There are some tricks for removing the drum, so if you get to that point, post here for some tips. The most important part of servicing drums is to only work on one side at a time, so you have the other side as a reference how the parts fit together. If you get the parts from both sides mixed up there’s a lot of permutations to go through which will waste your time figuring the correct configuration again. I always draw a sketch of how the parts fit together before taking the first side off as a backup. Taking a cell-phone photo makes sense too.
Understanding how the forces are used in that configuration to stop the car is helpful too, especially if you at a scientific type. There’s a thread of mine here where that topic is discussed, I’ll check to see if I can find it.
ok, found it