How to remove rear brake drum

Hi Sparky,

Remove the screw you can see. make sure your handbrake is off. The two tapped holes you can see are for screwing bolts into to push the drum off. If the drum still seems to tight get a hammer and give afew reasonable taps around the rim and face off the drum to remove dust that could be making them tight and failing this get a straigt screw driver inthrough aa hole on the backing plate and by using a lever motion on a small nearled wheel inside back your brake drums off a bit. I am not sure of the direction but its not that hard to tell if its getting tighter or looser.

Good luck
Troopytrek

I had a 45 with the floating rear axle (same as the 75's) and It only had the one large Phillips head screw to undo, but required a hell of a lot of bashing to get it off. The heat from the brakes helped almost weld this thing in place. Keep bashing... you'll get it.

Sparky

From memory having owned an earlier model Toyota but with a similar setup....undo the screw. Then it is a slow process of tapping the drum with a hammer in a criss-cross manner until the bugger loosens up. You could also try to loosen the brakes shoes using the brake adjuster. I think it is anti-clockwise to loosen. Hey I may be wrong (old memory fading lol) but it is worth a try.

Sparky,
Two things, my old HJ75 had one countersunk screw in the rear drum. Remove that and your part way there.
The tapped holes are as you say, for removing the brake drum. I bought a couple of Hi-Tensile bolts with the right thread and used those to pull the drums.
Tension them up and then tap around the drum with a hammer, when it moves tighten the bolts some more and repeat until drum is off.
Other thing, if the drums have a bit of age on them they'll have a lip on the inside edge. This will make them impossible to remove if you don't back off the brake adjustment a bit. Basically the shoes wear into the centre of the drum causing its inside diameter to increase, the shoes adjust out to compensate.
The inside edge of the drums doesn't wear, no shoe contact. This means you are trying to drag a drum over shoes that are bigger in diameter than the whole you are trying to pull them through.

Hope this helps,
Geoff.

Gidday,If you havent got them off yet spray a little INOXA where the drum slides over the hub.Make sure you get the right metric bolts or you may strip the threads in the drum and then you will have a problem.
Seeya Locallaw

When trying to back the knurled adjusting wheel in the slot (remove rubber bung) have a look in with a torch and you will see there are saw like teeth on it.
You need to turn it backwards so that the high points of the teeth are going first .
There is a flat piece of spring steel that catch the teeth to stop them turning backwards and releasing the brake shoes.
I have a piece of no 8 wire bent in a slight arc, put it in the slot in the backing plate and over the wheel cylinder next to the teeth on the adjuster, if you push on it you will feel the resistance from the spring steel, you only have to push it about 1/8 " to allow the toothed wheel to be turned with a flat blade screwdriver.

Thanks all for the advice. I have done the tapping trick with the hammer to no effect. I had considered backing the adjuster off after depressing the ratchet catch. I thought those tapped screw holes were for drum removal. I didn't realise though, that one winds the screw in to push the drums off. I was thinking of using a wheel puller. It definately pays to be in EO for help & advice. Once again thanks to all of you.
Sparky