2 quick questions.
1. does any body have a good picture of drum brakes for a 01 cherokee?
2. at around 50-55 mph i get a shack in the steering wheel and gas pedal. but it goes away above and below the 50-55 mark?

 

If your thinking the shake in your wheel @50 is related to your rear brakes thats probably not the case.. but anyway a little trick that i do when i do any drum brake is i always leave one side alone and complete for reference... did you take both sides apart? They arent all that complicated they just look it really..

 

Are you lifted? old tires? Stock steering? Its hard to pinpoint any issues without alittle more information on your jeep. You could have something as easy as a tire out of balance or worn steering parts.. But if its coming and going around the same speed all the time i would guess that you need to balance your tires..

 

no lift, stock steering and i did my drums 1 at a time. just they were grabbing at 30 and i think i fixed it just wanted to see a real picture if you know what i mean

 

that sounds like out of balance tires to me. recommend trying a rotation first. I always balance the tires going to the front. if it changes any you know its tires. but the speed your describing seems to be pretty universal across all car and trucks for wheel vibration to show up. as for the brakes be sure to have them adjusted properly there should be just a very slight drag on them when you spin them. be sure the brake drum is all the way up against the hub when checking this

 

The "wheel shake" condition bugged me for a long time. I have two full sets of wheels and swap them seasonally. My fun fair weather set (BFG Radials on CenterLine HellCats) shook worse than the winter set. Probably due to more time on long trips at highway speeds. The HellCats also had a wider inner rim surface than stock wheels.

In my experience with these, I learned that high speed wheel imbalances can be caused by wads of grease in the inner rim wall. The grease - more prevalent in front wheels - often comes from the excess ooze leaked from the grease boots following lube jobs of rod ends and ball joints. Usually unseen, obscured from your line of sight, the dirt builds and collects onto the greasy wads over time and can actually add up to enough weight to throw "wheel shake" at certain speeds. I now inspect and scrape any deposits periodically, especially after a trip to my lube joint, and at beginning/end of each season as the wheels are getting swapped. There has been no further severe wheel imbalance since I adopted this practice.

Pull your wheels and scrape away any build up with a putty knife. When you're satisfied that there're no more deposits in the rims, take it for a ride and check for wheel vibrations at-speed. If you still experience the wheel shake at-speed then get high speed wheel balancing.

 

That's a fairly good example of rear brake assembly but it lacks the detail which should indicate the size/area difference between primary and secondary shoe linings. The primary shoe, with greater lining surface area, should be mounted to the rear of the drum brake assembly.

 

when was the last time u actually had the wheels balanced though?

 

Hey I didn't draw the thing up lol. I don't have a pic of my rear brake drums handy lol

 

fixed it with a little Si for ya...