Rear brake shoes and rear brake cable removal

Next up on the hit parade - removing the hardware for the rear brake cable (i.e. hand brake).

First order of business is getting the front end of the main brake cable loose. The grippable part inside the passenger compartment, under the dashboard, was removed many moons ago. So the next task is to remove the huge wingnut from the threaded end of the cable.

This turns out to be quite difficult - the nut is on there pretty solid, and will not budge easily. I resort to grabbing a pair of slip joint pliers and unthreading this wing nut a few degrees at a time.

About halfway through, trouble - the cable itself twists out of the channel in the brake lever, allowing the pin pictured to escape. And there's no getting it back into the channel in order to hold the cable steady while putting the needed force on the wingnut. For a bit I thought I was pretty well screwed, and then I ended up clamping a vice grip onto this tab, and letting the end of the vice grip rest against the side of the engine, which gave it the support needed to stay in place while I finished removing the wingnut.

Wingnut conquered! The next task was to get the cable free of the bottom of the brake lever. There's a curved channel for the cable to sit in, but it's held in place underneath by a cotter pin. Said cotter pin basically comes apart in pieces as I attempt to get purchase on it - its in a very annoying, difficult-to-see spot.

Next to come off is the brake lever itself. There's a single bolt holding it to the body. Fortunately, I have the service manual CD available, and I print out the related sections as I tackle each job, so I see the instructions that says "Caution! Left-hand thread!" - which I noticed after a couple of attempts at loosening this bolt the normal direction, heh heh. Once I went righty-tighty, it came loose fairly easily.

That's it for the engine compartment side. Now, the rear end, where I discover just how greasy things can get.

The main rear brake cable hardware, which sits just inside the driveshaft tunnel, above the driveshaft. The cable from the front end is visible coming off the bottom of the photo, heading toward 10 o'clock. It's held to the lever piece (the straighter horizontal bar) by a pin and cotter pin. This cotter pin turns out to be a bear to remove, partly due to the greasy nature of the area and partly due to the close quarters I'm dealing with underneath the jacked-up car. I simply cannot get my arms in good positions to get purchase on this piece. It ends up taking getting my neighbor Frank over, the two of us on the ground on either side, reaching up with one extended arm each, to finally get this pin out. Phew.

The spring comes off easy enough, just a matter of getting a good grip on it. No tools needed on this one.

The rear brake cable is attached to a pair of brackets on either side, not far down from the center portion. Frank, whilst under the car, grabs a wrench and detaches both fairly quickly, so I didn't even get a chance at it. Sneak.

The ends of the rear brake cable pass through cable roller housings, attached to the back side of each rear brake anchor plate. It's difficult to see on this photo, but there are two vertical bolts/nuts - the one obvious one, and then another to the left, with the bolt coming up from beneath. This second bolt is what holds the pulley in place. The roller housing is also held in place by a bolt passing horizontally through the rear axle casing.

In order to get the rear cable ends detached, I have to disassemble the rear brakes. First task is removing the three cotter pins pictured (two on left, one on right).

Once the two larger cotter pins are removed, bolts on the back of the anchor plates can be removed, and the pair of guide pins can be pulled out.

 Another bolt at the bottom, holding the bottom ends of each brake shoe, comes away, and the shoes can be removed along with the brake lever, which the rear brake cable end attaches to.

The remaining task is to remove the two small nuts from the posts holding the pulley housing to the anchor plate.

Success! Another disassembly job complete, mostly. There's a lot of cleaning yet to be done...