On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:29:08 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 03:55:15 -0700, "Howard Beal"
wrote:

Any tips on turning brake drums on a toolroom lathe ?

Gonna do a brake job on my car over the week end and
am thinking about turning the drums myself.

TIA.

Best Regards
Tom.

Generally speaking today if they need turning you are better to
replace them. They are on the thin side to start with, so machining
them at all makes them too thin to work properly. Drums are (generally
speaking) pretty cheap.

This is true for newer vehicles, maybe 1990 on. But earlier vehicles
had more meat on the drums. New rotors are much worse, built to be
replaced rather than turned from the get-go. sigh I'm not looking
forward to financing the replacement of my rear disc+drum rotors on
the Tundra down the line, lemme tell ya. The emergency brake uses a
drum made in the interior of the rotor hub. Very odd setup.

That said, I have 54k miles on the beastie now and need to look at
those.


Not like you are in the middle of a third
world country with an obsolete vehicle (like my old '49 VW in Zambia
in '73 or '74, where I had to hack-saw and chisel a 1961 VW drum (half
an inch too wide) to fit when the spline stripped out of the original
on a trip)

Sounds like that was a real joy to perform. Ugh!

--
My desire to be well-informed is currently
at odds with my desire to remain sane. --Sipkess