Rear brake attention - Smart Car of America Forums : Smart Car Forum

shop hermit · 09-30-2008, 05:55 PM

I had occasion to remove a rear wheel on my smarty today and noticed a couple of things that I thought worth passing on. First, the brake drum surface under the wheel is not painted (on mine at least) very well and there was already a thin film of rust there. I wire-brushed it and put on a thin coat of light grease. The second thing I noticed was that like many cars, the drum is secured to the axle by a countersunk torx screw. I've run into this a number of times and often have to resort to heating and cooling it to get it loose because they invariably freeze up. Since I know at some point down the road I'll be taking that drum off to replace the shoes, I took the precaution of removing the screws and putting a little Never-seize on them to save myself a headache later on. I used a #25 torx bit, but it seemed a little loose and it might be a #27....anyway it worked. One of them was very tight and I was a little worried, but it finally broke loose. A word to the wise if you do your own brake jobs!