1964 drum brake squeal

[Tim D.]

I'm just finishing a complete restoration on my 64 Vette. I'm test driving the car to get the "bugs" out of it. ALL brake parts are new/reproduction including the drums. The front left brake squeals and it sounds like someone is blowing into a harmonica. If I step on the brakes softly there is no squeal. If I step on them medium to hard it squeals loudly. The brakes do not pull to either side. They seem to stop pretty well for drum brakes. I bought repro anti-rattle springs that go around the drum, but I could not get them to stay on the drum. They kept wanting to "roll off" of the drum....seemed like the groove wasn't deep enough to keep them in place on the reproduction drum. Or maybe there wasn't a groove at all. I don't remember, I will have to look.

Some thoughts I have are possibly switching the left and right drum, changing to a cheap soft set of brake pads from a local parts store or GM. I am going to inspect them again this week. What should I look for to see if my installation was done correctly etc.?

Any thoughts would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks,
Tim

[Domenic T.]

Re: 1964 drum brake squeal

I would pull the drum off and check the springs, especially the 2 small ones that stabalize the shoe to the back plate.
Look for the signs of rubbing that made the noise and also that all oil or grease was wiped off drum & shoes with a cleaner.

DOM

[Stuart F.]

Re: 1964 drum brake squeal

I bought repro drums from Ecklers to replace my originals that I anticipated would be junk as I had Sintered metallic linings. I went with Matrix Ceramic linings and just could not get them to adjust properly. I checked every thing over and found the repo drums were, as you say, quite different. Besides not having the groove for the springs, they have a different dimensional relationship between the hub surface and the lining surface than the originals, such that the linings were not seating correctly in the drum. The drum flange did not even fit up to the backing plate properly. I finally had to recut my originals which did check out good enough to save and I now have some fine brakes.

Stu Fox

[Tim D.]

Re: 1964 drum brake squeal

Thanks everyone. I will pull both front drums this week for a close inspection and report back with my findings.

Tim