Folks,
I have a 1984 S3 that I like to take offroading as often as possible.
However, after each trip, I end up having to take the truck back to the garage to get the brakes cleaned out and re-set, as the fronts stop working completely, meaning that it just drags the rear tyres under heavy braking. I'm not mechanically minded enough to do this at home and figure that properly working brakes are quite important, so don't want to potentially bodge them.
Is this something that I will have to live with due to the drum brakes, or is there something (aside from not going through water!!!) that I can do to stop this from happening? Is there an alternative option to investing £££ in disk brakes to make my drums perform better after they have been through mud and water?
I'm completely aware that drums hate water and need a bit of drying off after going through deep water, but even after the dragging the brakes for a good couple of miles to get them really hot, I still have no front brake performance whatsoever and widn up with a long pedal and an alarming pull under reasonably heavy braking. Once they have been cleaned out and set up again, they perform brilliantly.
I have a 1984 S3 that I like to take offroading as often as possible.
However, after each trip, I end up having to take the truck back to the garage to get the brakes cleaned out and re-set, as the fronts stop working completely, meaning that it just drags the rear tyres under heavy braking. I'm not mechanically minded enough to do this at home and figure that properly working brakes are quite important, so don't want to potentially bodge them.
Is this something that I will have to live with due to the drum brakes, or is there something (aside from not going through water!!!) that I can do to stop this from happening? Is there an alternative option to investing £££ in disk brakes to make my drums perform better after they have been through mud and water?
I'm completely aware that drums hate water and need a bit of drying off after going through deep water, but even after the dragging the brakes for a good couple of miles to get them really hot, I still have no front brake performance whatsoever and widn up with a long pedal and an alarming pull under reasonably heavy braking. Once they have been cleaned out and set up again, they perform brilliantly.