I recently did this job on my 89 Carat. It didn't take very long, no
special tools besides a spring hook, because you'll be doing a good bit
of that. You don't need to touch the Big Nut (unless that's your
problem, in which case another story). You will probably need to whang
the hell out of the drums with a big hammer to get them loose, so be
careful where you strike.

Take a look and see what if anything needs to be replaced.

After that, have something to plug the brake lines--if you're replacing
the cylinders, and I would--(the lines remove from the cylinders on the
back of the drums... stick a dowel in a pencil sharpener, one for each
side, and cut it short so that it doesn't accidently lever off a wooden
plug inside your brake line).

If you're just replacing the shoes, pay very careful attention to how
everything goes. A digital picture is always good, but until you clean
things up, you might not get much out of a photograph.

The most frustrating and time-consuming part will be handling the shoes
and springs to get all this stuff back on. There's no way to describe
it exactly, you just have to do it and once done, the other side will
be a snap.

Jim

On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 07:15 AM, Shawn Wright wrote:

> Near the end of our last road trip, I heard some scraping from the
> rear end
> when applying brakes which sounded like it could be a wear indicator
> telling me something...
> I've never had the rear drums off - do the shoes have wear indicators
> normally (the PO used  oem shoes from dealer)? The noise wasn't always
> present - is there anything else it might be? I have a new set of
> shoes, but
> I would like to avoid removing the big axle nut, which I understand is
> possible. Does anyone have any good write-ups for this procedure
> bookmarked before I dive in?
>
> Thanks.--
> Shawn Wright
> http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright
> '88 Westy 375k
> '85 Jetta D 263k
> '85 Jetta TD 482k (retired)
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> "Friends don't let friends use Outlook"
>