Changing Rear Brakes-1995

Has anyone changed their rear brake shoes on a post-1992 Transport? I had the misfortune of having that weird horseshoe retraction spring break. It apparently was broken for a while (no symptoms), because it ended up destroying the drum and both linings.

Tried to get a new spring installed w/new shoes. No way would the spring go on right. The service manual says the spring has to be installed BEFORE the shoes, but it will not go on correctly. The curvature is identical to the orig. broken one, so I have the correct new spring. The problem is that the spring will not go down to where the fixed metal "tab" at 6 o'clock will hold it-it stays about 1/2" too high. The good drawing in the ser. man. clearly shows that the spring sits down behind the tab so it is captured.

I have not done this myself, but there are some pretty good instructions, pictures, & diagrams at the link below. Check them out and see if they are different than the manual that you have.

If it was me, I would take the wheel on the other side off and do a comparison.

http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/1e/f4/ba/0900823d801ef4ba.jsp

Let us know what happens.

Take Care,

Yes, the Autozone drawings are good but they assume, just like the factory service man. that reinstalling the return spring is easy. It "should" be, but something is clearly wrong with the parts on my left rear wheel. The mounting block that hold the metal tab at 6 o'clock appears to be too wide-there is no way the spring can slip down over it in order to allow the tab to capture the spring. It isn't a matter of a few mills, the block is approx. 1/4" too fat.

This whole episode started 2 days ago as my wife pulled into the parking lot of a local Toyota dealer to pick up a part for her Supra. The wheel started making loud noises and locked up. I drove over with a bunch of tools and tried to fix it in the parking lot. I had also picked up a new drum, linings and a spring kit at Autozone. Unfortunately I forgot to take the serv. man.---how difficult could this job be?

First problem was removing the drum. Seems Pontiac saved a few pennies and didn't bother to put a brake-adjusting slot in the backing plate-or the drum. The serv. man. says something about drilling a 7/16" hole or using a hammer to knock out some tab. *IF* I had taken a big hammer with me I would have used it to break the stupid drum into small pieces.

Somehow I managed to get it off. Sure enough, it was scored beyond saving.
Got all the parts off and tried to get a new return spring back on. No way. Gave up for the night. Went home and discovered the book says to put the stupid spring on FIRST. Went back last night and tried it that way. Still no good. At that point one of the service guys came out (seems I was providing entertainment for the idle salesmen who were standing around watching) and said he had some techs. who had GM experience, so I left it in their hands to fix the next day (today).

I'll let you know how they did it.