How To Adjust Your Drum Brakes

Hey guys, this is Matt with BleepingJeep.com and today I'm going to show you how to adjust your drum brakes. But first, check out the website, BleepingJeep.com. There we have lots of cool Jeep t-shirts and we also have discount codes and coupons for all the parts that you could ever want. We also have a lot of cool videos, off-road videos and that kind of thing. So check it out, BleepingJeep.com. Also do subscribe to the YouTube channel and check out the Facebook page as well. Alright, let's get started. Alright, so here is your drum brakes. They're pretty much all the same on any vehicle. There might be slight differences, but basically they're all very similar. First off, you've got your wheel cylinder here, you've got your brake shoes here, you've got a bunch of springs and all kinds of little brackets and things like that. And then what we're going to be dealing with today is this self-adjuster down at the bottom down here. Now first, let's go over a little bit about how this works. You've got brake fluid that pumps from your engine bay into this little piece right here. And this is called the wheel cylinder. And brake fluid pumps into there and there's little springs or whatever in there and they push out and they push out on your brake pads. And your brake pads push out on this drum. Now what that does is slow you down. Now, there's an adjuster down here in the middle of all this. And this thing adjusts out or in. Now what you want is for these brake shoes to be very close to the brake drum. You don't want them to be so tight that it won't spin. But you don't want them to be so far in that when you press the brake pedal that they don't touch anything when these move out. So you want them to ride real close to the inside of this piece right here. So that it's just kind of rubbing slightly. And to do that, what you do is you adjust this little adjuster. Now these adjusters are supposed to be automatic. That's why they're called self-adjusters. When you set these up for the first time or when you change your brake shoes, you do need to adjust this adjuster. And then after that, when your brake shoes wear, this adjuster is supposed to self-adjust. Now sometimes that doesn't happen, whether it be rusted or whatever. Now what happens is when you go into reverse, pressure is applied to this thing. And if it needs to, it'll click into the next spot and tighten itself outward. Now sometimes that's in reverse. Some cars, it's whenever you apply the emergency brake that that self-adjusts. But like I said, this thing will get rusty or it'll get dirt in it. Maybe it won't self-adjust. Or like I said before, when you go to put new shoes on, you need to adjust this as well. So today I'm going to show you how to adjust your self-adjuster. Alright, so to adjust your drum brakes, it's pretty simple. You don't have to take all this stuff off like I did. I just did this to show you what's going on inside here when you do the adjustment. But you will need to jack up one side, the side that you're adjusting, off the ground so that you can feel the resistance in the tire or the wheel whenever you try and spin it. Now for you, there's this little rubber piece right on the back. So you go behind the tire, back behind the wheel here, and you'll take a little flathead screwdriver and you'll pry this plastic, this little rubber piece out. And what that does is it opens a hole for you to be able to get a screwdriver inside here. So all you want to do then is stick your screwdriver in. You're going to point it to the top and then you're going to adjust by pulling the back handle of the screwdriver up, which means the tip of the screwdriver is going from the top to the bottom. And that's tightening. You can hear it clicking. And this is like a little gear right here. And every time it clicks, it locks into place and then it won't go backwards. If you try to go the other way, it's going to jam up. Now you can get it to go the other way, but you shouldn't do that. You just want to tighten it. If you need to go back the other direction, you can't really do that very well. So you want to make sure you get it right the first time. If you do need to go back the other direction, however, you can stick another screwdriver in there, hold this adjuster off while you adjust it back the other way. Now as this is turning, that's pushing these brake pads, these brake shoes out and squeezing down on the brake drum, which in turn is going to lock the wheel if you tighten it too much. But, so that you can see what I'm doing here, obviously I don't have the brake drum on. But like I said, you're just going to put this in here, you're going to tighten it a few clicks, and then you're going to either take your, if you have your wheel off, you're going to take your brake drum, rotate it slightly, and feel the play. If you've got your tire on there, you can turn the entire tire to see how much, how tight it is. Now, once it starts getting tight, you know that the brake shoes are pushed out far enough and you can leave it like that. You don't want it real tight, but you just want to feel a little slight bit of drag. Let me see if I can show you. Alright, so let me see if I can show you how this will feel. I don't have the axle shaft in there, so it's going to look kind of funny, but you're going to put your screwdriver in there, you're going to move it up, and you're going to feel it. Now right there, I can feel it starting to get a little tighter. Right there it's snug. Let me show you what will happen if I go too far. Now it's not even going to move at all. Now that's too far, and I shouldn't have done that, but let's see if I can back it off a little bit. There we go. Alright, so that's about right, just there. You want just a tiny bit of slight drag, and then you'll be good to go. Alright guys, now that's how to adjust the tension on your drum brakes. Once you get done, make sure to put that rubber plug back in. Now like I said, once you get that in the ballpark, it should automatically adjust whenever you go in reverse or whenever you pull your emergency brake, but it doesn't always. If it's rusted shut or if it's hard to turn, go ahead and replace it. In the next video, I'll show you how to disassemble this entire thing, and we'll put it back together. Don't forget to check out the website, bleepinjeep.com. We've got all the best videos on YouTube, none of the boring stuff. We also have off-road and Jeep-related hats and t-shirts. We have discount coupon codes for all your off-road parts. Don't forget to subscribe and check out the Facebook page as well. We'll see you next time.