Brakes pulling in the wet

[bison]

Hi Folks,
Anyone experienced this?. If it's chucking it down, and remember I live in Scotland, it's always chucking it down!, the front brakes are terrible. The drivers side doesn't work at all and it pulls badly to the left. I took the drum off to have a look, the shoes were a bit glazed so I cleaned them up, but this morning even though they seem slightly better they still don't work properly. I think water is getting into the drum somehow. Ideas?.
Me.

 

[reidalpine]

Hi bison!-Think this is fairly normal in Scottish/Norwegian down-pours
Usually I try to keep my wheels out of the grooves made by lorries as they tend to be afloat with water when it rains.
Water DO get into the drums and there's not much more to do about it than to be aware-after checking that all brakes are like ofcourse -lightly putting your foot on the pedal from time to time will help warm up and dry the brakedrums and evaporate water. Best bet would be to move to drier place-or stop using the brakes at any time! c",) -R.

 

[bison]

Hi Reidalpine,
I like the idea of moving to a drier place!.
I do remember seeing on other cars small holes in the bottom of the backplate to allow water to escape, perhaps they are there and blocked?, I'll investigate when the monsoon stops.
Thanks.

 

[reidalpine]

Think a hole will only let more water in,one idea might be to drill a hole use the top part of a pop-rivet put into the hole from inside and stick on a bit of plastic or rubber-tube from outside onto this
-this way they will be both held in place and pointing the hose backwards you wont get water into it...
seem to remember you had only Uphills in Bonnie Scotland-isn't is just to go off the acc and it will stop soon enough??? -R.

 

[bison]

That's a good suggestion, I'll have a look and see first if there's a hole there.
Uphill north, downhill south!
Thanks

 

[malcolm]

The days of drum brakes have passed for the majority of the population. The advice they used to offer on signs after puddle locations was to "try your brakes". Reidalpine sounds like he's still in with the scene. In the wet a long and light touch of the brake pedal before any obvious braking point will heat off the water so the proper braking later on will work.

It's a technique that's lost these days. Whether something cool like decent drainage will work I do not know, though the gap between the drum and backplate ought to do the drainage well enough - never tried anything like that on my old drum brake R4. Disc brakes work pretty well though. :smile: It's only the front wheels that steer - drums on the back are fine.

 

[angel]

All R4 drum backplates -front and rear- have a pressed lip at the bottom that is supposed to drain water away. But don't rely on this, such problems are inherent to drum brake design.

 

[bison]

Dear All,
Pulled off the wheel again between showers and found the handbrake cable outer was split in a couple of places right where the supporting spring is, about 50mm from the back plate, this was allowing water in and it's been flowing into the drum!, taped it all up until I can get a new cable fitted. It had been taped before but it had come off.
Thanks for all the suggestions though.