Brake Class Complete!

One day we had a visit from the Klein Tools folks and learned more about tools.

Brake class was only 5 weeks, but it was a lot of fun, and I really learned a lot about brakes. Specifically, I learned a lot about drum brakes and parking brakes, since I had never touched any of those before. Brakes with rotors and calipers have become more popular on cars than brakes with drums and shoes, but there are a lot of vehicles that use both, so at least now I could put on some brake shoes and adjust the star wheel and parking brake! Remember, with great horsepower comes great responsibility, and without brakes, it's not going to end well! 

Wheel cylinder, inside are the two small pistons to spread the two brake shoes and brake against the brake drum. 

Some of the springs that hold the shoes to the backing plate and to each other.

When we took this rear brake drum off, we saw the shoes and everything were covered with axle grease, so, we took this half of the axle out and replaced the axle seal, added grease, and reassembled the brakes with new pads and hardware.