Rebuilding my rear drum brakes.. yeah, I should have just done the dial conversion. Too late now I guess.

Anyway, I found out that my rear brakes were a mess. Broken parts, missing parts etc. Surprised they even worked at all.

Now they are back together but the parking brake strut spring doesn’t look installed correctly. It’s just on the strut, flopping around and not attached to anything. I looked at online photos and couldn’t tell anything.

is there a certain orientation or way it should be installed? It just doesn’t look like it is serving a purpose.TIA

 

Post up a picture or two, so we can see if it looks right, as opposed to you thinking it doesn't look right.

 

Here ya go, hopefully these help.

 

It's hard to tell from the pictures. The strut should have some ridges to catch the spring. Maybe your strut has simply rusted away. But it could be any of the 50 parts that comprise of drum brakes. The design of the drum brake is so silly. While it's hard to believe that our species invented that mess, properly functioning drum brakes work pretty well and its not worth the money to install a disc setup.

 

Yep, silly for sure.

The strut looks like this one. Even had to replace the drivers side with a new one because it had fallen out at some point and the end ground off from rubbing the rotor..

 

I do believe that the spring goes on the end of the spreader/strut.
If I remember correctly the piece on the spring that is sticking out is fitted into the end of the bar, and the open end to the drum.

 

 

Got it. There is a tapered end to the spring and I have my spring backwards.
Thanks for all the replies!