Brake Replacement

As you may have heard, we have been having some unusual wear on our left rear RV tire that looks like the brakes are locking up and "flattening out" the tire right down to the belts on just one side. It has done it to two different tires, granted the tires were nearing end of life but still much worse wear than the other three tires on the rig.

Before our last trip I had purchased and installed a new hub & drum since the last one seemed exceptionally worn where the electromagnet for the brakes rubs. That didn't solve the problem and we were back to running on our spare again so I did more research and it appears the brakes themselves need replacing. The internet experts out there say the brakes and electromagnets wear down from all the friction so you should just replace the entire assembly instead of just the shoes.

I ordered a set of 4 (2 left and 2 right) since there's a difference between the two sides from eTrailer. After they arrived, I installed them starting with the worst one and working my way around. It's very straight forward. Jack up the rig, pull the tire, pull the hub & drum, then (in my case) remove 5 nuts holding the brake assembly in place and cut the brake wires. To install the new one, just reverse the process. I used some dielectric paste on the electrical connections and wrapped them in black electrical tape heavily to keep the water out.

Now I have to break the brakes in a bit to get the them working efficiently which seems to entail a lot of braking while driving around the campground before heading out on the road. The other thing I did to try to prevent the brakes from locking up was to dial down the gain on the truck brake controller which seemed to help.

Have you had issues with odd tire wear or brakes locking up? If so, let me know your solution!