Greetings EKOBS,
Last summer I was faced with a similar situation. Here's a quick summary,
followed by some questions & a recommendation based on my own
experiences.
****
Thanks to the PO deleting the RR parking brake cable & the need to get
a NY safety inspection sticker this past summer, I was forced to open up
the right rear drum brake on my '99 C2500. (8-lug, JD7 brakes)
Upon opening, I was surprised by deeply heat-cracked shoes, for the truck
had been stopping without
any misbehavior up to this point? Found the same
heat cracking on the driver's side, so this meant that I had no choice but to do a
complete refresh of the rear brakes.
So my first thought was to bite the bullet & replace the old 13" drums with new, OEM quality
in order to match all the other new bits. But the more I read, the more I realized that buying
new drums in 2023 was going to be a complete crapshoot at best.
Realistically speaking, I needed to budget for a pair of new brake drums
PLUS having
them immediately turned by a local brake specialist to true them up, and
then put
them on the truck. (NOTE: I really dislike vibrating/shuddering brakes, just as
unacceptable as driving with bad steering.)
So I decided to see if my 'well behaved' original drums could be turned just enough
to clean them up for the new shoes I was installing? It took a bit of searching, but
after calling several businesses with no joy, I was finally referred to the last business
in the greater Syracuse area that still machines brake drums.
And they nailed it. The guy that did the work (Mike) has been doing this for 25 years.
They charged me a flat $20 per drum for their work. During reassembly, when I
adjusted the new shoes for a *slight* drag, they did so evenly throughout the
full 360° of rotation. Best of all, once the truck was back on the road, the rear
brakes perform flawlessly.
The company I used was PBS Brake & Supply. Here's their contact info:
PBS Brake & Supply -- 6044 Corporate Dr. East Syracuse, NY -- ph: (315) 463-4541
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NOTE: They are located in an industrial park area near the southeast corner of the Syracuse International Airport.
****
I realize that Buffalo is too far away for you to justify using these folks, but
I'm thinking that you must have a similar brake specialty business in your neck
of the woods? (And if you can't locate them, possibly call the folks at PBS Brake
and ask them if they have a place in Buffalo they either own or could recommend?
Thinking back to my own situation, when they checked my 13" drums, they stated
that they had never been turned, so no problem turning them. (They weren't
going to touch them if they already oversize or would have to be cut oversize to clean
them up. Follow this
LINK to see what I ended up with.)
Q1: Are you retiring your old drums because they are unserviceable? Or were you
thinking (like I was) that new is always better than old? If you are lucky, possibly
your old drums can be remachined, allowing you to return those bogus new drums
for a refund?
Q2: Assuming you get these new, out of spec drums replaced under warranty, if
the replacements spin true then you should be good to go. But if the 2nd set is also out of
round, would you be willing to have them trued up by a local brake specialist?
****
Just throwing out some ideas for you to ponder. Although I'm pretty frugal,
my decisions on the brakes were driven by performance, not price. Just
happened that the best of all worlds was remachining the OEM drums that
the truck came with.
10+ years ago, the above would have sounded ludicrous. But for a bunch
of reasons outside the scope of this discussion, it's a brave new world we're
living in. Every single thing now falls into the "Trust, but Verify" category. :-(
Best of luck getting this sorted out.
Cheers --