Foreshadowing in the title, there…
Now that the rear brake had been gushing fluid for nearly a month, inside of that brake drum was a mess. I didn’t snap a picture before hosing it down with brake cleaner. It was awful in there. A thick black, sludgy, fuzzy (?) mess. This pic is after a can of brake clean.
That’s a little more apparent on the back of this brake shoe.
I fought with that spring clip for a long time, which is probably why I took a picture of it. Take a break from swearing at it. Eventually, I got it off.
Everything went back together with the new hardware without any further issues. This was after work one evening and I only had an hour or so of daylight left to work with.
As I was buttoning everything up, checking that everything on the new wheel cylinder was tight…
The bleeder screw broke off in the cylinder. It probably cracked when tightening it, but it actually fell off while I was tightening the hard line below it. I whacked it with the wrench a couple of times and it fell apart.
I considered trying to use an easy out bolt extractor, but it would be $15 to buy one of those to try or $20 to replace the wheel cylinder (again).
So, off to O’Reilly I went. Luckily (and surprisingly) it’s a part they keep in stock (O’Reilly link).
