[steelerguy]

Has anybody else had bad luck with Autozone shoes & hardware?

Have a 99 Durango, 5.9 with 4wd. About 2 weeks ago, I changed my rear shoes & hardware, as well as the drums. I thought everything looked good. Bought the lifetime guaranteed & hardware kit from Autozone. Got Raybestos drums from JC Whitney.

Changed one side at a time & followed the Haynes manual exactly. The only thing that made me a little nervous was that the 2 top springs ended up being installed in a different order than the original installation. But this was exactly what the Haynes manual instructed & it was supported with a picture.

After a couple days, I started getting light shaking from the rear. It got progressively worse & could be be duplicated exactly by stopping or slowing the truck with the parking brake only. This means the problem is in the rear as that's all the parking brake actuates.

Anyway, I pulled the drums last night & saw that the rear rod on the passenger-side cylinder had slipped behind the 2-week old shoe & that was apparently causing my problem. No problem on the driver side.

I pulled the top 2 springs & manual adjuster. repositioned everything & reattached the everything. Haven't done a ton of rear brakes, so I compared everything to the good side & all looked fine.

Put everything back together & test drove it...all light braking. I got 1 or 2 series of shaking, not quite as bad as before. Stopped it in reverse a couple of time & that made it even better. Within 5 minutes there was no shaking & seemed to drive normally. Drove & stopped at 10-50 mph for 10 more minutes & was like new.

Drove to work this morning & after about 10 miles (5 at highway speed) the bad shaking has returned. Apparently, one or more cylinder rods is off again.

Don't see any leaks from the cylinders. Did not check the cylinder mounting bolts (Doh!!!) but I've never heard of them coming loose on their own when they've never been changed.

I'm thinking of replacing the shoes & hardware (after checking the mounting bolts) with either Carquest or Napa parts. Thinking that the shoes on the passenger side were manufactured incorrectly or that the new springs or other new hardware are weak.

What do you think? Could I have done something wrong that causes the rod to come out away from the brake shoe? Did not think there was a lot you could do wrong & still get it to assemble & work for 10 or 15 miles.