Replacing drum brake wheel cylinder

01CuHed

TJ Enthusiast
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Joined
Apr 28, 2018
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South/Southwest
Yesterday while doing a routine visual inspection on my drum brakes I noticed my passenger side wheel cylinder had a small leak. The leak was so small there were no visible signs of a leak on the outside of the wheel. I would have never known unless I took the drum off. I plan on replacing both wheel cylinders at the same time and wanted to know which brand is recommended for our Jeep TJ's? Being my Jeep is stock would Centric be a quality wheel cylinder to use? Thanks for any input!
 
Centric usually makes decent parts. Blaine uses their premium rotors in his high end brake kits.

Might as well replace anything else that looks worn while you're in there.

(If you plan on converting to disc brakes, this would be a good time to consider doing that)
 
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Thanks Steel City for your input! These day's you hear so much about low quality parts...just trying to avoid them. Ha!
 
Yesterday while doing a routine visual inspection on my drum brakes I noticed my passenger side wheel cylinder had a small leak. The leak was so small there were no visible signs of a leak on the outside of the wheel. I would have never known unless I took the drum off. I plan on replacing both wheel cylinders at the same time and wanted to know which brand is recommended for our Jeep TJ's? Being my Jeep is stock would Centric be a quality wheel cylinder to use? Thanks for any input!
Did you use the Centric wheel cylinder? I need to replace mine. Rock Auto has the Centric for $6 and change while the Mopar wheel cylinders are almost $44 each! Must be made of gold or some other rare metal.
 
I used Centric wheel cylinders on my rear brake overhaul. Matter if fact, all parts were Centric. Seem to work just fine.

IMG_20200202_214659.webp
 
I recently just did this job back in April, if you have to replace your wheel cylinder, you're probably due to do a complete rebuild of the rear drums, if you don't have them, get the right brake tools from autozone/oreillys/advanceauto first otherwise you'll be wasting hours & risking your own safety with all the springs. As far as brands go, this is a part you can just go with what the store has, or use a rebuild kit.

Also if you live in a rust prone area, you're probably going to wanna just rebuild the cylinder still attached to the backing plate otherwise, you'll need a 10mm bolt extractor & most likely an air chisel.

Good luck, this job is quite easy
 
Cryptoyeets said:
Also if you live in a rust prone area, you're probably going to wanna just rebuild the cylinder still attached to the backing plate otherwise, you'll need a 10mm bolt extractor & most likely an air chisel.

I live in PA and just did this on a 145k mile TJ. The bolts were no problem, the brake line on the other hand was. The nut was frozen to the line. It would turn, but it was twisting the line in the process. Ended up replacing the wheel cylinders and the axle hard lines, which wasn't all that bad.
 
Shortly after purchasing the '01 Sport 4.0L I discovered both wheel cylinders were weeping, both brake mechanism parts were rusted, the shoes were nasty and the drums had seen better days.
I evaluated how much it would cost me to replaced all the parts and decided to do a disc brake conversion instead. Purchased the brake conversion kit from Blaine and had my friend and my brother assist me in doing the conversion. The entire installation took about 4-5 hours taking our time.