[VB] Brake shoes

[c.dreike]

Dave,
Thanks for the advice. I drove around my neighborhood in 2nd gear while 
applying the brakes until they were hot. I could just smell something. A 
little scary as I could not stop the bus from rolling back down my 
driveway with the parking brake. Parked it in my garage for about an 
hour and a half to cool, no parking brake.

It now stops better than before I started down this path. I can stop 
hard, lock up the brakes too. However it takes a verrry heavy foot to 
lock em up.
Must have them adjusted fairly well as there is almost no pull left or 
right. Same with the parking brake.

I'm going to try the old composition shoes on the front and see what 
happens. I'll mark each of the new shoes so I can put them back in the 
same place as now if I want.

Will post again when finished.

Cheers,
Chris

On 5/16/2017 8:36 AM, david raistrick wrote:
>> The stopping power does not seem to be improved with the new shoes. Also the
>> parking brake really needs a hard pull to keep the bus from rolling down my
>> driveway. Not much friction being generated.
> new shoes definitely need some miles to break in.  you can (carefully)
> bed them in like disc breaks by doing some aggresive stopping.    just
> dont overheat them (but get them hot).  then let them cool (no parking
> brake!) down, after that you should see a marked improvement.
>
> that said - I'm not a fan of semi-metallics for the most part, I
> totally prefer the performance of the traditional organics for vw
> drums (and they dont eat the drum as bad either).
>