2000 cherokee rear brake repair

Hi everyone, I'm new to XJ's and purchased my first 2000 cherokee last year. It's a sport 4.0liter, 4WD, Automatic trans that was pretty well taken care of by my coworker. However he hadn't maintained the rear brake assembly in years. I've read many and other jeep threads related to this issue, but I cannot seem to figure it out still.

Passenger side rear drum brakes, I had to replace the leaking wheel cylinder so I got a spring kit, cylinder, shoes, and a drum. I've rebuild everything just like the original and put it all back together. I went to adjust the star screw until the wheel had a tad of resistance, but even at min travel on the screw the wheel is uncomfortably tight. It's not completely bound, but definitely tighter than any other drum setup I've done in the past.

After test driving with light braking, as you'd expect the drum is pretty darn hot! Is my adjuster too long, could i possibly run out of travel and still have this much contact? I'm sure this topic has been discussed to death, but I can't find the exact same problem. Hasta Thanks for the help!

There were two different sizes available for replacement drums for the XJ....a 9 or 10 inch I believe. I wonder if you got the wrong sized replacement drum, or perhaps mismatched hardware, causing your issue. I would search either here, or in general for:

"2000 XJ brake drum sizes"

That should get you started. Good luck and welcome to . This forum has saved me dozens of times and the knowledge base here is unmatched anywhere else.

I had continuous issues with the rear drum brakes on my 98 after replacing all hardware and shoes myself with aftermarket parts. Eventually, I had to scrap everything and purchase replacement parts directly from Jeep....been solid for over a year now.

This might be a good read through:

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=17757

Thank you for the information! I wanted to come back and post my solution, as I took everything apart today and found the problem.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but the "parking brake link" was not quite installed appropriately. This is the steel bar with the yellow spring on it. It was just a bit further down in elevation from the actual "notch" that it's supposed to fit into (the side where both the shoe and parking brake plate should fit together). So this must have caused the rear shoe to stick out just enough to catch the drum.

Now that it's in the correct position, i was able to set the drum resistance properly and it feels great during operation! Thanks for the help!