Autozone Brake Shoes & Hardware Kit

[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.

[GTP Dad]

Did you force the rods back in before you installed and adjusted the new shoes. It appears that the rods are being pushed out too far and causing them to drop into the drum. I would remove the drum and the shoes. Open the bleeder valve on the wheel cylinder and push the rods gently back into the wheel cylinder. Then reinstall the shoes and adjust them using the adjustment screw on the bottom. Adjust them so that the drum just goes on, there should be some slight resistance. Then bleed the brakes on that side and test drive the car. This should take care of the issue. I have used Autozone shoes before and never had an issue with them. I hope this helps.

[steelerguy]

Originally Posted by GTP Dad

Did you force the rods back in before you installed and adjusted the new shoes. It appears that the rods are being pushed out too far and causing them to drop into the drum. I would remove the drum and the shoes. Open the bleeder valve on the wheel cylinder and push the rods gently back into the wheel cylinder. Then reinstall the shoes and adjust them using the adjustment screw on the bottom. Adjust them so that the drum just goes on, there should be some slight resistance. Then bleed the brakes on that side and test drive the car. This should take care of the issue. I have used Autozone shoes before and never had an issue with them. I hope this helps.

Yeah I did kind of force them and never thought open the bleeder valve. Not in the manual but then manuals don't alway incorporate practical experience. I'll try that & need to bleed & replace all the fluid anyway. If I do that & it does it again, it's time for a trip to Carquest then a return trip to Autozone.

Thanks for the advice.

[steelerguy]

This ended up being fixed by having the badly out-of-round brake drums machined by a local car shop: American Auto Lube & Repair at the SEC of Guadalupe & Cooper in Gilbert, AZ. 480-539-4086. They did the whole job for $43 & it took over an hour.

I know that I could probably taken the drums back to Checker where they were purchased 2 weeks before, but I did not trust them to get it right. They actually started this mess in the first place by screwing up my original equipment drum with a routine turn.

The drums I got from RockAuto.com were also bad. The owner at American Lube & Repair said that he would buy any critical parts at NAPA or CarQuest.