UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hi, i need some advice on changing the rear shoes on my car as what looked like an easy job has turned into a fiasco.

The manual said its easier taking the hub off but lacking the tools to do this i had a go anyway but could not get the handbrake cable off due to lack of space. I could grab hold of the cable with pliers but due to the tension they would always slip off when twisting it the 90 degrees to free it from the shoe.

Does anyone have any tips on removing this cable, or any other tips for doing the rear shoes? Would i be better off just biting the bullet and getting a puller to remove the hub?

The most annoying thing this is that in all my pushing and pulling on the cable and shoes i managed to dislodge the wheel cylinder and it leaked fluid from one side. I pushed the piston back in but is it likely that the rear cylinder needs replacing now too? I've bled brakes before so am happy bleeding them, but wanted to check if there's any problem with just topping up a little with dot 4 and bleeding the air, rather than changing the whole systems worth of fluid.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I've done this on that car as my wife's Polo has rear discs, but I have done it on the older model of Ibiza - ie 6K which was basically a 6N+ Polo. So, have you slackened off the handbrake cable - ie at the threaded adjuster inside the car behind the handbrake lever (handle)? Its always a bit of a pain taking these things apart while the hub is there - but as I've said I've done it to the Ibiza and a few Fords before that - before Ford Fiestas started to come with hub assembles that just needed 4 boltsd removing. You will need bits of strong wire to pull the springs back through the new shoes and also use this to wire up the cylinder to stop the pistons poping out. I'd expect that if you were careful when refitting the pistons that they will be okay as normally now a days, a new cylinder is needed. It would have been handy if you had cleaned up the exposed and maybe rusted up a bit ends of the cylinder before reloading the piston - using the escaping fluid as a lubricant and flusher helps here while you work away at the rusty ridge with your fingers! Your brakes might benefit from a full fluid change anyway - do this every two, or maybe now three years.

Hi, thanks for your advice. Slackening the handbrake cable at the handle end really really helped. The second thing that made the difference was removing the upper return spring. I'd shied away from removing it as i wasnt confident i'd be able to get it back on, but it wasnt under much tension at all. In the end it didnt turn out too bad. First side took about 3 hours of cursing and swearing but once i'd figured everything out the second side took about 20 minutes!

For anyone else who wants to do this without removing the hub heres what i did:

1. Chock wheels.
2. Slacken the handbrake cable nut at the handle end right to the end of the thread. the trim is just clipped down so give it a yank at the back.
3. Jack up, remove drum, clean off dust etc.
4. CABLE TIE/wire up the cylinder across the lip of the piston. Haynes says to do this later but all the pushing pulling caused mine to pop out before i'd got to that stage.
5. remove the pins/springs holding the shoes on. Compress it with pliers and twist it from the back with the other hand.
6. Grab the bottom of the rear shoe (same one on both sides) with some pliers and push it out the pivot at the bottom. The other side should come out easily now and the bottom spring can be removed.
7. Re-check cable tie on the wheel cylinder. There will be more room now so it can be tightened up a bit more.
8. Remove the upper return spring. Its the smaller silver one on the front side of the arm linking the shoes.
9. Remove the handbrake adjuster spring (altho it doesnt really matter at which point you do this) and the two sides should come out from around the hub.
10. Now's the easiest time to remove the handbrake cable as you can maneuver the shoe out.
11. Swop all the bits over onto the new shoe (not the one with handbrake lever on it). The big spring is a ba####d. It squeezed it off with pliers and pulled it back on with pliers stabilising the shoe between my feet. Using a wire coat hanger i found it too difficult to get the spring back on as the wire hanger hooked around the bit you're trying to hook onto the shoe reducing the amount of spring you have to catch onto the shoe.
12. Offer the shoes up to the back plate, reconnect the two sides and reinstall the upper return spring.
13. Now reattach the handbrake cable. If you do this before step 12 the tension makes it more difficult to reconnect the two sides.
14. Reattach the lower return spring and position the top of the shoes back in place over the wheel cylinder pistons and the bottom bit of the front shoe located in the lower pivot.
15. Refit the pins and springs holding the shoes in place.
16. Grab the bottom of the rear shoe with pliers and force it back until the rear shoe can locate in the lower pivot.
17. Cut the cable tie off from around the wheel cylinder and jig the shoes about until they're centered again.
18. Refit the handbrake adjuster spring put drum back on, wheel etc.
19. Pump the brake a few times to get the auto adjuster into place. I then took the drum off again to check for leaks around the cylinder just to be certain it hadnt been disturbed.
20. Retighten the handbrake adjuster inside the car (probably the most boring bit).

Just for reference i tried removing the wheel cylinder securing bolt (torx30) to push it through to give me more room to manoevre the shoes out but it made no difference. Just remove the upper spring and the shoes come apart easily.

If the cylinder piston pops out, like mine did, just push it back in and bleed the relevant brake line at the end. Mine seems to be fine doing this and i've had the drum off twice checking for leaks to ease my paranoia.

Hope thats of use to someone. Honestly it's not too difficult to do once you figure out which springs are under tension and which ones you can remove without too much worry.

Good to her you sorted them out okay, its always better to curse and swear instead of bottling it up - well that is my story anyway! The shoe hold down springs, yes these used to be a real pain in years gone by when they tended to be very very strong - especially when cars had front drum brakes. I seem to remember that I normally had to do this sort of work in winter and after pressing down the spring retainers a couple of times you kind of lost the feeling in your fingers a bit! I always fancied needing to buy the proper tool for that job - by I ended up buying cars that had no drum brakes front or rear - so cheated myself out of that treat!

The real nasty thing about the 1990> Ford Fiestas were that the drum and hub were one unit, and you removed four bolts to take the drum/hub and stub axle off - the only problem tended to be that the back plate was secured to the beam axle using two large pop rivets - which rusted with time so, when the car was a bit older, instead of wrestling with the drum jamming on the shoes you ended up with drum jamming on the shoes while trying to stop the back plate complete with rigid brake pipe moving around too much as it had broken free from the beam axle!!!