Hi again,

Well, replacing the parking brake shoes that self-destructed after only a quarter century of service in the 1980 242 last week. Old ones off, new ones on, and now the brake rotor won't fit over the new ones. Cables are fully slacked and everything appears right, but obviously not. Any ideas ?

Thanks, as always.

Mike

Just re-did mine (89, 245) last weekend. Mine do not have the ridgid adjuster. My 84, 245 had them. In either case I've found that I could move and change the positioning of the shoes quite a bit. The ridged adjuster I had to wobble, move, jiggle, etc., untill I was able to replace the rotor. Though, a simple project, I rate it next to heater fan replacement, for aggravation/ frustration.

They also shouldn't take a month to seat in. If adjusted at hand brake correctly, you should have a firm set of parking brakes at 4-6 clicks of hand brake.

My experience.

Thaks everybody for letting em know that I am not alone in having this simple project be fraught with aggravation adn frustration. I will do the wiggle, jiggle and lots of trial and error to get the disk/drum back on. My experience, too, is that once all assembled there is a lot of play in the positioning of the brake shoes, and perhaps these are just no lining up correctly for teh disk/drum. Glad(?) to hear that it takes some finagling, which is what I was going to try.

I couldn't get my rotors on no matter what I did at first. I ended up filing a tiny bit off the steel part of the new shoes where they fit into the rigid spacer. I know that's a bit vague. What you're doing is making the diameter of the circle that the shoes form a tiny bit smaller. That's the only way I could get mine together. They work great. Oh, at first they didn't seem to work that well. Then after a couple of months, they began to work better. I'm thinking that they needed a little time to seat better in their drums.
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Thanks everyone for all the information and advice, Doug C. 81 242 Brick Off Blocks, stock, B21F (non-Turbo), M46; 86 244, B230, 140k , auto.

have you sprayed plenty of brake cleaner on that area to clean up any rust or corrosion so the shoes will slide ok? (remember to use non-chlorinated brake cleaner so it won't ruin rubber or tar)

use moly grease on the contact points of the shoes to the back plate for easy sliding.

you may need to adjust them tight to get the rotor on, then check the play, pull off the rotor, adjust them outward, check the play...etc.

good luck
chuck
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'88 244 174K, '87 BMW 325e 180K (used to feed a '84 245, '84 244, '85 744)