Brake drum noise?

[Kafziel]

I put new brake drums on both rear wheels on Sunday, and something seems to be wrong. Every time I slow down, there's a bumping noise that resounds through the whole ass end. It's pretty embarassing. I'd like to tell myself it's some kind of breaking-in period, but I don't think that's the case.
They went on easily enough... old, rusty ones off, new shiny ones on. The e-brake still works solidly, and aside from the noise the car brakes normally.
Anybody else done this before? I could use some suggestions.

[i_a_n112784]

Did you also change the pads/shoes? The only thing I could think of is that maybe something didn't go back together right. And did you adjust the brakes back in to account for the thickness of the new drum vs the old one? Or was there not much difference?

[Kafziel]

I didn't do anything to shoes except clean the whole assembly with brake parts cleaner, then slid on the new drum.
I guess it's possible that they need to be adjusted for the thickness. I don't think I'll mess with that myself, though. When it comes to my brakes, I'd rather have a professional screw with them. I just swapped the drums because I heard it was simple. Guess it isn't.
So looks like I'll be heading over to the mechanic.

[Kafziel]

Okay, I got talked out of going to a mechanic. My father-in-law convinced me to put new brake shoes on myself. Wow, what a pain in the ass THAT was. Then, having put them all back together, I find that the brake pedal goes all the way to the floor before the brakes engage. It was dark at that point, so we decided to call it a night and start again this afternoon.
Last night, we were thinking we could just screw with the self-adjuster to get the shoes closer to the drum, and that should do it. But he just called me out of the blue and says he wants to bleed the brake lines. God damn it.
So my questions are:

1) how long does that take?
2) is it really necessary? There's no reason to think we got any air in the lines.
3) is it going to fix the problem, or just waste more time?

Starting to think I should have told him to take a hike and paid the $100 to have someone else do it.

[Kafziel]

Never mind. It's done. Thank god.
I'm very happy; until it was fixed, I was stuck driving my wife's yellow Protege5 to work - teddy bears and all.

"Zoom zoom" my ass.

[wheel1856]

just for future reference...ALWAYS bleed the brakes, all of em. Start with the one furthest from the master cylinder, and move up until you've done all lines. You don't want to discover there was a bubble in the line in heavy traffic or heavy turns.

also, having rebuilt the drums on my past 92 hatch, it's usually a good idea to replace everything in the drum, it's sucha pain, its worth fixing them all at once, springs, pads, drums, etc. I got away with rebuilding the drums completely for about $120 from Autozone. and took one afternoon to do it.

glad you got it fixed. if it's working fine, no noise, don't bother replacing the springs at this point, if it aint broke, don't fix it.