Parking Brake Issue

[filmteknik]

I've been hearing a sound which most say is probably a wheel bearing.  I have many years of experience with basic brake work and based on my online research I figured I could probably manage replacing a rear hub but a front I'd probably take it to a garage.  The question was what wheel.  A mechanic who did a ride-along said he's 95% sure it's a bearing and definitely the rear.  But I never did figure out which side.

Let me just preface the rest of this by saying yesterday I gave up and took it to the mechanic for repair.  One reason I threw in the towel was something to do with the parking brake.  Having never had rear disks off on this vehicle yesterday I decided to pull left rear and see if there was anything I could see to help determine which bearing was going bad.

I jacked up left rear, removed and tied up the caliper and removed the caliper bracket.  Disk was on there pretty tight so I did the 8mm bolt thing to break it free.  It didn't come right off after that and I goofed by not backing off the parking brake adjuster.  I wiggled it off.  Bad idea.

When it came off, the left (towards the front of the car) retaining spring and cup fell to the ground.  I put them back on.

I suppose that is okay.   But when I looked over to the right (rearwards on the car) that one was a lot looser.  Not sure how it is supposed to be but this cannot be right as it will be hit by the back of the wheel studs of the hub.

How could this be?  Yeah, maybe if the head of the pin (as I call it was broken off in back but that's not the case.  Also, I see this one is not straight but does a kind of dogleg job.  I presume that's correct.  Is it?

Anyway, with the spring and cups removed and me holding it in position from behind the pin will contact the hub. 



So what gives?  What could I have done to cause this?  Could the axle shaft have shifted somehow?

I needed to do something so as a purely TEMPORARY measure I put some washers on the back side of the pin to pull it back and clear of the hub on the near side.



So with it shimmed in back like that the the spring looked like this.  At least it's clear of the hub.

Anyway, I'm not driving it like this.  Just the block & a half to the garage.  Told them to do the bearing repair and said to look into the parking brake and I showed them the pictures.    Really curious what's going on.   I realize I erred by rocking the disk around instead of backing off the adjuster but I just can't see how the spring pin & cup would NOT be hitting the hub.  Unless something shifted.

 

[lenore]

That is weird, the pin bent is from the wheel hub hitting it.  Is the back plate that the shoes rest on bent outward? you might want to compare to the other side of the car axle hub.

[filmteknik]

Mechanic figured it out as he showed me the whole hub replacement procedure.  (It was the other side after all.)

While the pin towards the front of the car is straight the one towards the rear has, as I said, a dog leg bend to it.

Apparently my wiggling & angling the disk to remove it (instead of cranking back the parking brake adjuster) caused some of that dog leg bend to be reduced making it a little bit straighter and thus a little longer.  A visit to the vice with a few taps of the hammer put some of the angle back in and now it clears just fine.

Got to "drive" while 3 feet up in the air while he listened to each side.   That was interesting.