Every time I see someone selling a set of Aluminum brake drums for some way out of sight price. It makes me mad. And it makes me come to the conclusion of if anyone has ever RE-SLEEVED a brake drum? I work in a repair shop, and we often sleeve shafts for a bearing journal or for a mechanical seal . Obviously a sleeve is not the best type of repair. But is almost good as new . And often saves the part, and saves money. I have a drum that is too far worn to undercut. And I dont want to pay these high ass prices either for a replacement . I know I would probably have way too much time into the re-sleeve job to justify it. But maybe a point could be proven and others could do the same thing instead of adding the aluminum to the scrap pile. Just throwing some ideas around. One worry that I have is that the braking surface doesn't seem perpendicular to the drum hub. So the sleeve would have to be machined to the correct taper to ever start to work. IDEAS anyone??????
i'm sure the steel lining inside the aluminum drum isn't just an interference press fit- there are probably grooves or knobs on the back side of the steel sleeve that the molten aluminum formed around when it was cast.. maybe resleeve it and put some kind of set screws or locating pins in it..
They are being sleeved already. Its crazy money. Do a search. I think they are over $300 each I think gbody is selling them
WHAAT 300 bucks. Well I guess at 100$ an hour plus 30% profit would put the retail price that high. But man I've got to show our machinist. They just love when I ask for help on a personal project. Besides I couldn't have been the first to want to tackle this task!
Exactly what I said. The aluminum drums cool faster but as the insert gets cut they heat up faster so they expand faster and eventually can litterally blow up under hard braking.
I just took a set of Aluminum Brake drums to Murray today to have them undercut. The guy put one on machine and it was wobbling all over the place. At first I didn't think it was tightened. Then he put a a brand new one on and there was no wobble. He then put my other one on and I watched him tighten it and it wobbled too. So both were warped and I'm wondering if that is the reason why when I'm driving my car I get a little bit of wobble. I also took them to a shop and had them check the drums and they said they same thing, they were warped and no good and most likely the reason my car was wobbling. So I'm buying cast iron replacements.
Any idea of a good brand of drums? I don't mind price a good price, as long as they quality. It is kind of like buying oil filters, I found out that Bosch filter cores are the same as Mobil and K&N. Bosch is half the price of Mobil and Mobil is a dollar cheaper than K&N. I just bought a filter for an oil change in my truck and some guy tells me that Bosch filters aren't this or that and I said, well I read they were the same core and basically the same filter and he was just paying for the name. He said well lets see whose engine last longer. This is off the subject, but I don't want to pay for the name when I can buy one of the same quality. So far in my area I have found: ValueCraft $28 a piece Duralast - $42 a piece and the guy said it was no better than the Valuecraft that you were paying for the 1 year additional warranty Wagner $53 a peice - the guy at Murray's told me this was made out of some type of aluminum composite and he wouldn't recommend it, because the drums I just took off are an aluminum composite. Anybody want to buy some warped brake drums? I think the reason that they did warp, when I first went to the burnout box I would keep my brakes pressed to the floor and burnout. Eventually I learned that once the wheels start spinning I can ease off the brakes. When I let my wife take the car down the track, she did a monstrous burnout and kept the brakes to the floor. She turned heads with her burnouts. So maybe us together warped them
Personally with all the cheap steel being used it doesn't really matter which one you buy I've seen them all go bad. I decided to go disc and even with vac setup the braking improved tremendously.
All the drums are probably made overseas anyway. I had a guy bring me new rotors from the dealer and they say china on the boxes.Could have bought the auto zone ones for half the money. Aluminum drums will explode. I had a customer tow in a 88 gta with the drum blown apart. The parkng brake was stuck on.
