Merry New Year, and of course I will be updating my next entourage with my beloved pickup sometime this month: fixing my leaking passenger rear wheel. Seems something brake-related is unhappy since it's actively leaking fluid out the back of the backing plate.

 

Hell yeah. Keep at it! Gotta bring in the new year right! Haha

 

Greetings again folks,

finally found some (hopefully) reputable wheel cylinders to replace my not-so-well rebuilt Aisin 7'8" ones, and some new shoes for the passenger side since they are thoroughly coated with brake fluid.

Still sourcing some proper springs but I figured I'd take a gamble on some from a 2wd 1984, since the ones for a 2wd 1983 are by BrakeBest or Duralast and they haven't given me great experience with the star adjuster conflicting with the biggest spring on the shoes. I'll write up moar once the springs arrive Monday, in the meantime I will install the news wheel cylinders tomorrow!

 

Greetings again! I have an update on my findings:

The 1984 (purple spring on the adjuster) and 1983 2wd springs (blue one on the very bottom) seem to be interchangeable! The 84 main spring seems to be made of some slightly thinner gauge wire but are the exact same shape. The included c-clip for the handbrake linkage seems to have some interference so I am reusing my old one. Sadly, the kit did not include the security clip for the autoadjuster linkage... but i could probably find that at ace hardware ill also be re-using that too

Passenger side cylinder has been installed and ill bleed it once everything is back together of course (both cylinders are leaking so new shoes and hardware and everything for both sides! )

Going to double check my FSM for how the main spring is routed across the star adjuster... dreading the new spring also has the same original issue: conflicting with the star wheel on the adjuster but we'll see. I will also upload the drum brake diagram here too for anyone else interested.

darn this 2mb image limit is constricting to do writeups on my phone with... what is this 2004 still???

 

Turns out the 1984 springs do have clearance between the spring and the star wheel which is EXCELLENT!!! And in that case, I do endorse buying them for your Leading-Trailing brakes on the half and quarter ton truck drum brakes. At least from BrakeBest... I'll attach images of the work i've done soon once I compress them to attach them

 

Also turns out... my driver's side star adjuster is still contacting the main spring ...

debating on either looking for a spring kit from anyone other than BrakeBest or just get a new adjuster assembly, the right '83 kit and experimenting with an '84 kit had the same results which is making me think something else might be wrong here too.

EDIT: asked my neighbor to help me with the spring and he just tweaked it with some pliers and now it clears the star wheel. Halleluya!!

 

Slapped the drums and wheels on, adjusted em, bled em, now gonna torque the wheels (manual calls for 65-87 ft. lbs so ill do 75) and go for a ride to get the adjusters adjusting!

 

Got it stapled together, just need to either adjust the wheels manually or adjust my handbrake since it feels out of spec now. No leaks thankfully.