Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, September 29, 2005 at 11:53PM :
The lining just came off of one of the front brake shoes on my Chevy half ton. I'd checked the shoes a few weeks ago and all 4 front shoes had at least half their lining left on them. The lining came off in small pieces when I was braking lightly on a downgrade with the truck empty. After taking things apart, I noticed all the linings had large cracks running all over them in a generally lengthwise direction. I've never seen brake linings crack before. I know I overheated them a couple times back in June when I had a big load of machinery in the truck and was going down some long, steep, winding mountain roads.
My question is this: Is it typical for brake linings to crack and come loose from the backings simply due to overheating, or is this a sign of poor-quality shoes? I probably put these on 5 years ago or so and definitely did not buy the high-end shoes (it's only a chevy, after all). It turns out I have a bunch of army surplus shoes of the correct size so that's what I replaced them with. All my army surplus shoes have asbestos warning stickers on the boxes so I assume they are old-style material that contains asbestos. Is it possible that the non-asbestos lining material is more likely to fall apart due to heat than the old asbestos stuff was? Time will tell if these ones hold up better.
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