DominicWilbrink
Member
When I routed the spring as you did in the photo, it pulled the adjuster arm away from the adjuster wheel on both sides enough that they would never adjust up. It wasn't a lot but it was visible.
So I have a new problem/"What not to do story"... I bought my brake parts kit on amazon. It included new auto-adjust brake levers. So I used those and threw out the old ones. When I took for a drive right after completing the work they were squeaking. I found this thread and assumed that it was simply a matter of correcting the spring placement on the adjuster lever per the original photo in this thread. Last night when I opened them up I found that I had a bigger problem. It took me a little bit of time, to figure out that I had the wrong lever. There was a comment on the amazon page for the kit that I bought and I'll let that person's comments tell the story:
"I used this kit for the rear drum brakes on a 1997 Jeep Wrangler SE (TJ). Although there were some extra retaining clips that weren't needed for my Jeep, all the parts fit fine EXCEPT for the adjuster plates (see photos). The new adjuster plates protrude quite a bit further than the stock adjuster plates, grinding a rut into my brand new drums. If you hear a grinding noise while driving after you've properly adjusted your drum brakes, STOP DRIVING immediately and check the adjuster plates; this is how I found out about the issue. If you still want to use this kit on 9" drum brakes, either clean up and reuse your old adjuster plates, or file/grind the new ones. It's too bad because the rest of the kit seems good, but because new drums will cost me twice as much as this kit, it gets one star."
Moral of the story... I should have read this and his comment first. In the meantime does anyone know where to get the correct adjuster lever? Like a dumbass I threw mine out.