George:
I've lamented the loss of shoe arcing places, too, but perhaps a good
fit is not very necessary with the rear brakes. I think they only
contribute about 25% to the total braking power. I did many brake jobs
years ago on 4 wheel drums and it made a big difference there (I worked
in a shop that had a drum lathe/ shoe grinder. I ground a lot of
asbestos shoes. That stuff smelled so nice!!)
To illustrate how unimportant the rear shoes are:
When we got our first 87 Vanagon (with 24k miles) in October of 1990,
the first time my wife took it out by herself and returned, I was
standing next to it and noticed a strong burning rubber smell. Upon
close inspection, I realized the tires were smoking because the brakes
were red hot. I'd apparently left the e-brake on (I ALWAYS DO!) and she-
not being familiar with the new car- just drove it that way. I
immediately sprayed off the wheels with water from a garden hose, to
avoid damaging the tires further. I figured the brake shoes would be
nearly destroyed. I inspected them later, and they did have many heat
cracks in the linings, but no loss of lining chunks. I think I did
ultimately replace them after another 100k miles!
What this proved to me was two things:
1. The oe linings are pretty good stuff!
2. They are way over engineered for the work they usually do.
Al Brase

George Goff wrote:

>In a message dated 2/5/05 4:56:29 PM, mpteleski@YAHOO.COM writes:
>
><< Can i be a cheap-ass and keep the old shoes or do i need to replace them
>at the same time? i was concerned that the old shoes will be a different fit on
>the new drums. >>
>
>Matthew,
>
>The newer shoes might even fit the replacement drums better than the old
>drums.  It seems to be a vanishing concern to radius shoes to fit drums.  I'm not
>certain if this is caused by the problems with asbestos dust or if drums have
>gotten so cheap that they are routinely changed along with shoes.  If you
>inspect replacement shoes, once they have been scuffed in, which have not been
>radiused, you will find that as little as a third of the friction face is making
>contact.  At that rate, the shoe will be worn out before it fully seats.
>
>A few years ago, I went in search of a shop in my burg to radius some shoes
>for me.  I realized that I was in deep doo-doo whenever City Brake said that
>they no longer had the equipment to do the job.  City Brake does only brake work
>and they have been around since automobile brakes were nothing more than a
>leather belt wrapped around a flat pulley.  I took it on myself to radius the
>shoes by fabricating a radius fixture to use on a 12" stationary disc sander.  I
>dragged the sander outside to do the work and I still wore a dust mask with
>filters rated for asbestos.  Although my fixture had no micrometer dials, I
>bumped it gradually to a tight fitting radius.  The shoes came out pretty damn
>good, but, after all of that, it didn't seem to make a difference in the
>seat-of-the-pants.
>
>George
>
>
>