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how fast do rear shoes wear?

N8N_99xj

NAXJA Forum User
'99, 9" drums, ABS. Just pulled rear drums this morning to lube the star wheels and give them a clean, and also just to have a look at them because I have not ever had the drums off since I bought the vehicle (in January.) I don't drive it much, I've probably only put 2K miles on it since I got it, most of that in two long trips. The thinnest of my rear shoes is at .150" and my understanding is that "worn out" is .125" - is this something that will wear out soon, or can I address this next spring?

thanks!
 
I know they're almost worn out, but if I can put it off for a while I might just swap rear axles, convert to disc, or something like that. At the very least I'd like to clean/paint the backing plates even if I stick with the wussy little drums.

I did price it out on rockauto, everything except wheel cyls. (because I believe that new springs/hardware are worth it!) was about $125.00 so that's not bad, but I'd really rather schedule the work and maybe collect some backing plates to clean and paint before I start taking the heep apart (yeah, I'm kinda anal like that.) Plus I'm already in the middle of other projects right now...
 
i've noticed maybe 3-4 changes of the front pads before the shoes need to be replaced. I check them every other oil change and if they aren't cracked or too thin I sand the glaze off of them and put it back together.
 
Ok that's kind of what i was looking for... I'll see if i can borrow a drum caliper to see if I'll need drums and plan on doing them soon but not necessarily immediately.
 
This isn't really relevant to the jeep, but.... I replaced the brakes on my wife's 03 intrepid at around 186k. They were the original brakes(car had 13k on it when we bought it) and when compared to the new ones I bought, there was almost no wear on them. The brakes worked fine, but since her driving was 99% highway, they got maybe a hundredth of the wear of a car that was driven 99% in town.

How long your brakes last will depend a great deal on where you drive and how.
 
if you decide to keep the drums, do the wheel cylinders.

you'll be pissed when they leak 6 months after you touched it all and ruin brand new shoes.
 
I hear ya... will definitely be considering an 8.8 swap. Seems like the easiest way to go, save for the fact that I would have to pay someone to weld on the perches etc. for me.

The odd thing that I noticed yesterday was that there's a tone ring and sensor on each wheel of the turdy-five, but it's a 3-channel ABS system (clearly, because there's only one brake line going to the rear of the vehicle.) How's that work, and how does one maintain ABS when swapping to a 8.8? I've heard people say that they've done it and that it works fine but the 8.8 under my F-150 (with rear wheel only ABS) has only one tone ring and sensor, inside the diff. Is the Explorer 8.8 different, or how do you make the single sensor play nice with the Jeep's ABS controller? I really don't want to 100% disable the ABS, although at some point I might put in a disable switch in case I do go off-road.

I've also been reminded just how much easier discs are to work on than drums...
 
Grind off every other tooth on the tone ring, and splice both sensor wires into the pickup on the 8.8.

There is a writeup on here somehwere
 
hmm. if it is that easy, other than the welding, I can definitely do this. Problem is finding one in the Land of No Junkyards. I did try to search a little on a writeup earlier but wanted to get the heep back on the ground before it started raining (as it is now.) I'm intrigued by this as in a former life I actually briefly did ABS development on light trucks (but not Jeeps) so I know enough about how this works to be dangerous but maybe also enough to make it work in a non-dangerous manner (I hope?) if I can just get a little more info.
 
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