How to repair rear drum brakes

"Danny,

Drum brakes work by spreading brake shoes outward and causing friction on the inside diameter of the brake drum. As the drum wears, the shoes are designed to keep a small amount of pressure on the drum so as to scrape up against it during normal driving.

This slight pressure is maintained by an adjuster screw assembly, which spreads out when you back up and use the brakes. In order to remove the brake drum, the pressure on the shoes needs to be released by turning the adjuster screw assembly in reverse. This is done by inserting a tool such as a flat screwdriver in a slot behind the drum support plate and turning a toothy wheel to loosen the adjuster. Once it is loose, the drums will slide right off.

Check out these great exploded view of brake drums and be confident, they all work mostly the same.

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A tip, take both drums off but change only one wheel at a time, use the other side for reference upon reassembly

Have fun.

Frank"

There are two ways to remove the drums on the Focus. There are 4 small bolts on the back side (I believe either 13mm or 15mm) that you can take off. The only issue with this method is that those four bolts are slightly hard to get to, and will likely require a socket extension and/or a universal joint, and lots of patience. The other method is to take the dust cap off and just remove the wheel bearing nut. This method is "easier," but requires an impact gun or huge torque wrench to do properly, because the wheel bearing nut requires something like 177 ft-lbs of torque. In addition, you have to mark the wheel bearing nut every time you take it off, which should ideally be no more than 4 times.

I just did my 2005 ford focus and what a $!^&#!!! This set up was different than any other drum I have worked on. There is infact 4 bolts that keep the housing together. I wasted about 2 hours pulling and beating on this thing. You need a 13m socket to pull the 4 bolts, and one of the 4 is a super pain in the &!@ because the brake line prevents you from getting a nice clean shot at it. If you are like me, and do not have the luxuary of nice lift, you need a good jack for sure. The key is to get the car high off the ground to allow good work space behind the drum. I had to pull the brake line to get to that 1 tricky bolt, and luckily thats one simple nut thats very easy to get to. After pulling the 4 bolts the %^#! thing slides right off. Now keep in mind the bolts hit a pattern and this thing will only go back on one way. So be very mindfull when you go to put the @%!!@ back on, you need to hit the holes on the pattern perfect. I also found that putting this thing back together was a pain!!! Im guessing because the new after market shoes are a bit thicker than the stock ones. So I had to fight the new shoes + hitting the bolt pattern perfect to put it back together. Providing I had this info Im guessing I could have banged this out in about 1 hr per side. Im hoping this proves helpful for the next guy!!!! Good luck, and NEVER pay out of pocket for something you can easily get done yourself!!

Not having worked on the specific car, but generally