Volvo Amazon and PV Brake Drums

[c1800]

Originally Posted by arcturus

Re grinding the profile on the brake shoes, shouldn't they wear to the correct profile fairly quickly?

One would think so, but not the case, given the hardness of the brake shoe lining material, they’ll ride along for many miles on only a portion of the shoe surface. There were machines in the shop to grind the shoe to match the radius of the newly machined drum. And depends on the lining material, back in the day it was asbestos, quite resistant to degradation from friction and heat. I remember when the mechanics would blow off the dust after removing the drum with an air nozzle before starting a brake job, clouds of dust , walked through clouds of that many times, but that’s another story.....

[Derek UK]

Originally Posted by arcturus

Re grinding the profile on the brake shoes, shouldn't they wear to the correct profile fairly quickly?

They may at the front if the linings are soft with only a single hydraulic cylinder you have to readjust them regularly to help match the curves. After say 1000 miles there will be quite a lot of dust and you can often do a bit of filing to even things out. Unfortunately you have to file down the area that has bedded in! Any areas roughened with a file will need to bed in again so that makes more dust. After doing this several times the area of lining that is doing proper work should be getting bigger.

[packers1712]

Good afternoon all,

I appreciate this thread is months old but though I'd tag onto the end of it, regarding grinding/re-surfacing drums I'm looking to get mine done as I have a brake pedal judder which I have identified one of the rear drums being the cause, can anyone recommend a reliable engineering machine shop to carry out the work, I have someone I usually use but he can't fit it in his machine and if we start making tooling to allow the mounting of the drum I might as well purchase a new one versus paying to create that tooling?

Thanks in advance, Doug.

[Salop Farmer]

Would gladly machine drum for you had you been nearer. But as this thread illustrates there is not a lot of material to machine out before the drum becomes oversize and out of Volvo tolerance limits. This applies even more to worn drums. I machined mine and they are right on max tolerance diameter. I will try them out but intend to replace with new copy drums from Brookhouse at a later date. From memory they are around £85 a side. Hope this helps.

[packers1712]

Thanks SF my drums are still in tolerance currently but I guess there is every possibility that by the time they’ve been machined round they may actually become oversize so nee might be the way forward after all!

Doug.