Break Drum Removal Tips and Tricks

[Bonemaro]

Ok, so I got my 4 foot pipe and impact 38mm socket and got the axle bolt off. Wasn't as hard to muscle as I thought it might be.

Now, this darned rust welded on drum. I have been pounding it with a hammer and ply bar for an hour and it hasn't so much as budged.

Are there any ol' school tricks or techniques to popping this puppy off? Harmonic balancer puller? Explosives? Something?

[helowrench]

Beer and penetrating oil.
Apply oil to the splined area.
Drink beer.
Make sure shoes are backed off .
Drink beer.
Heat up drum with propane torch.
Drink beer.
Apply oil.
Drink beer.
Tap end of axle shaft with hammer for vibration purposes.
Drink beer.
Sometimes it can take a day or two worth of beer.

[Bonemaro]

The adjuster is seized up. Beer is warm.

[helowrench]

Is there any movement at the center, between the drum and the stub axle splines?

[Bonemaro]

None. It's locked up tight.

[Marc]

Most of the time the problem is the shoes being rusted to the drums, especially when a car's been sitting as long as this one was. I don't recall you mentioning that the car wouldn't roll, however. Odds are that the linings are coming unbonded from the shoe frames so the shoes are probably not good for anything but cores. Frozen adjusters can usually be turned with a hammer and punch; stay clear of the little leaf spring detents. Backing off the adjusters isn't likely to help much in this scenario, but if there's a lip on the drum that stops it from coming off once it's broken free you may have to.

It's really rare for the drum and stub axle to rust together. I've only encountered one which resisted all my best efforts and required sacrificing the drum. If you have an air-impact chisel, chattering away at the sides of the drum's nose is normally enough to break it free.
Once the axle nut is off, there's nothing to prevent the stub axle from going inwards (for a half-inch or so, anyway - until the CVs run out of play)...with the driveaxle disconnected, the stub can be driven all the way out.

[Bonemaro]

It was on there tight, so I got a bigger hammer. BF slide H!

Even then, it fought a little. The pads were fused to the drums. I'm happy to say she now rolls. Thanks y'all.

[helowrench]

Sweet

[ProctorSilex]

I'm glad you got the drum off without having to sacrifice parts.
For future reference, I had some on this one chassis that were so stuck that I cut up the backing plate to get all the guts out. The adjusters would not budge. Penetrating fluid all over the adjusters and on as much of the shoes and inside as I could get did nothing, not even over night (I even tapped on the parts to get the fluid to penetrate better as directed on the label). The backing plates were in pretty crappy shape anyway and drums would have taken longer to cut. I had tried using a dead blow hammer and even a three pound hand held sledge against a really thick pry bar that I hooked into the back edge of the drum. The drums will start to break apart at the edges from this kind of abuse, but not enough to clear the fused shoes