OK Adjust the Brakes

I have vague memories of laying on my back in the dirt trying to find/adjust the starwheels on my drum brakes. And trying to use brake cleaner to clean up the grease soaked shoes.....

Of course two years ago I had to get on my back to bleed them;-)

Best mod I ever did.

Ron W.

Cog wheel....adjuster...star wheel

Same-same

You push the lever off star wheel with small blade tool then tighten/untighten adjuster with another tool

Even self-adjusting brakes need Initial manually adjustment when first installed (Or you have to do a lot of braking action before shoes would ever start engaging drums)


Self-adjusting drum brakes on trailers is sorta NEW..........but is same system used on drum brakes on cars/trucks for years.
Why it took trailer brakes so long to incorporate is the mystery.

Dave H M wrote:
well i think we ran into semantics here. Biscuit posted a great pic of the never adjust (oops Nev-R-Adjust) that I have. It is the lower one. To me that is kind of a cog wheel as opposed to the traditional star wheel on the top pic.

now if you want to loosen those shoes on the bottom, you got a challenge holding the lever off the cog and getting the adjustment tool to catch on the cogs on the ramped side of it, which leads to the procedure that etrailer gives on a youtube for initial installation.

Both pics are of self adjust... same star wheel and adjust mechanism.

well i think we ran into semantics here. Biscuit posted a great pic of the never adjust (oops Nev-R-Adjust) that I have. It is the lower one. To me that is kind of a cog wheel as opposed to the traditional star wheel on the top pic.

now if you want to loosen those shoes on the bottom, you got a challenge holding the lever off the cog and getting the adjustment tool to catch on the cogs on the ramped side of it, which leads to the procedure that etrailer gives on a youtube for initial installation.

I put Nev-R-Adjust brakes on my Laredo and they had a star wheel. Something is not right here.

There has to be a star wheel as others have said their part of the self adjusting mechanism.

Also, without a star wheel how would remove the drum if the shoes where to wear a ridge in the drum. Without an adjuster to loosen the shoes you would never be able to get the drum off.

Ron W.

Dave H M wrote:
There are "never adjust" brakes by lippert .

After a bunch of searching, I found what I thought was an excellent description and how to do the initial install by etrailer on a youtube.

Check it out, there is no star wheel. :W

Not sure what your 'wink' emoji is about.....

Unless you think an 'adjuster wheel' is not the same as a 'star wheel' I don't get where you think the 'self-adjusting trailer brakes by Lippert or Dexter do not use a 'star wheel'

The adjuster cable is attached to the brake shoe at one end and a 'lever' at other end. Lever engages adjustment wheel (star wheel) and makes adjustments to brakes shoes as they wear down.

Same kind of system used on car/truck drum brakes of old

To 'manually' adjust brakes you sometimes have to lift lever up off of star wheel so that it can be rotated.

This 'video' you found.........where is the LINK showing no star wheel


Lippert 12X2 self-adjusting (see star wheel at bottom)


Star Wheel with adjustment lever

Dave H M wrote:
There are "never adjust" brakes by lippert .

After a bunch of searching, I found what I thought was an excellent description and how to do the initial install by etrailer on a youtube.

Check it out, there is no star wheel. :W

Bam!

There are "never adjust" brakes by lippert .

After a bunch of searching, I found what I thought was an excellent description and how to do the initial install by etrailer on a youtube.

Check it out, there is no star wheel. :W

I had a wire chafing issue on our 5th wheel that caused the brakes to stop working, but that caused a short circuit indication on the brake controller.