Intermittant noise from brakes - Bent backing plate

[Maniak]

I've been driving the X more recently to weed out any lurking issues before taking it to truckhaven next week and found another issue. I have no idea how I did this but I figured I'd post it in case it helps anyone else.

I had an odd brake sound, sort of like a brake shoe scraping on the brake drum but it was intermittent. I narrowed it down to parking lot speeds but ONLY after I started from a stop.

My first guess was just worn brake shoes but I didn't think that was really it since they don't have that many miles on them..

I took the driver side off and found this.

Driver side rear brakes - bent shoe and backing plate by maniak_az, on Flickr

The top of the brake shoe bent and twisted. It was actually hitting the drum as there is a slight groove in it now. What is weird is the other brake shoe has a chip in it, in line with the groove. I'm assuming it didn't like biting into the rough groove.

I went to put new shoes on and things weren't lining up. Upon closer inspection we found that the pivot for the shoes wasn't perpendicular to the backing plate and the forward section of the backing plate was actually bent.

We pulled a backing plate off another X (luckily the neighbor has one he is parting out) and put that on my X.

We then checked the passenger side and found that one has a much more bent pivot point but the backing plate itself wasn't bent near as bad. On that side the lower part of the brake shoe was somewhat bent.

After another trip to his house to pull the other backing pate we were treated with this when I pulled my axle shaft out..

Axle after bad wheel bearing by maniak_az, on Flickr

I have no idea how long that has been bad but I never felt it. I guess running with a detroit locker in the rear and using ballistic joints on the front suspension gives you enough other noises/vibrations to not feel a bad rear bearing. At the groove is .080" thinner than right outside the groove..

Grabbed one of my spare axles and a near bearing/seal and fixed that too..

Just thought I'd throw this out there as I didn't see too many posted about people bending backing plates. I did find some, but not very many...

I have no idea how in the heck I did that but those are original backing plates with > 385k miles on them.

oh yea, I did replace both brake drums with the spares (new) I already had. I'll see if my old ones can be turned and put them in the shed as spares.

~Mark

 

[waskly]

your axles did all that damage, with that much damage on the axles, and the drums ride on the axle. when it does not spin straight but on an angle, and moves, it will break anything on it.

 

[Maniak]

I thought about that, but only the passenger side axle shaft was bad. The driver side has no up/down play (passenger side had a bunch).

~Mark

 

[waskly]

put the vehicle on jack stands, enough to clear the tires off the ground and let them spin, how bent is the other axle?