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" Drop cap initial letterIT&amp;#039;S been said that we take our parents and our brakes for granted. I just said it, so it&amp;#039;s been said. Really, when you think about it, they&amp;#039;re a remarkable apparatus. (Your brakes. Though I&amp;#039;m sure your parents are quite impressive.) They let you halt a two-ton car from highway speed in a few seconds using just your right foot, without the skin irritation of having to do the Fred Flintstone thing.  But your brakes have made a bargain with Mephistopheles. Most automotive components wear as a byproduct of doing their job, but brakes, like tires and clutch discs, haveto wear in order to work. You may go 200,000 miles without replacing a water pump or shocks, but you&amp;#039;ll probably change something on your brakes.  Flintstones notwithstanding, brakes on the earliest cars used a simple design inherited from carts and carriages: The driver yanked a lever that jammed a block of wood against a wood or metal tire. With the advent of pneumatic tires (Yo! Splinters!), another method was needed, so manufacturers employed a variety of odd systems using straps or bands anchored to the frame to halt the rotating axle. Mercifully, these were phased out in favor of a rotating drum at each wheel and curved shoes inside that pushed against the drum\u2014far superior, since the drums kept the friction material out of the dirt and rain. RELATED: Lost Art: Taming the Wild Carburetor The shoes in early drums\u2014and here we&amp;#039;re talking everything from Grand Prix Bugattis to World War I infantry haulers\u2014were moved by a cable or rod attached to the pedal. Hydraulically actuated brakes, which provided greater stopping power, became the standard, and drums were eventually supplanted by the now-ubiquitous disc brake, due to the latter&amp;#039;s superior fade resistance and low maintenance.  No new car currently sold in America uses drum brakes in the front, but a few use them in the rear. If you buy a vintage car, you&amp;#039;ll probably have to deal with them. They&amp;#039;re quirky, and in the modern age, can seem like more trouble than they&amp;#039;re worth.  So why tangle with this stuff yourself when old brake dust may contain asbestos, and when brake fluid smells like cat piss on a hot day? Because there&amp;#039;s a satisfaction in repairing a drum&amp;#039;s simplicity, and it lets you make the call on what&amp;#039;s needed. A shop may look at your brakes, go conservative, tell you it all has to be replaced, and quote you $1500. Maybe everything needs to be replaced. Maybe it doesn&amp;#039;t.  RELATED: In defense of the safe choice  FIRSTquestion: What makes you think the brakes need work? If the pedal goes to the floor and there&amp;#039;s a puddle of brake fluid, you have a popped brake line or some other hydraulic component failed. If the pedal goes to the floor but there&amp;#039;s no puddle, you may just need to bleed the air out of the lines, and you can spend long happy evenings on the Internet researching the various methods and tools.  More often than not, however, an old drum system just needs to be adjusted. Brake shoes are semicircular, like two bananas forming an &amp;quot;O.&amp;quot; When you mash the pedal, the shoes spread apart and push outward against the inside of the drum. Traditionally, one end of each shoe is fixed but can be adjusted out by rotating an eccentric adjuster pivot with the blade of a screwdriver. Lack of adjustment in general means wear and a long-travel brake pedal, and sometimes greater effort to stop. Problem is, the adjusters can freeze from corrosion and disuse. And they&amp;#039;re usually located inside the drum, requiring you to reach them through a hole in the backing plate, which means getting under the car. And when you find the adjusters, you can never remember which way to turn them (if you can turn them) to move the shoes outward. I often need to pull the drum off to see where the adjuster is, visualize how to reach it with a screwdriver, and confirm which way to turn it. But worn drums can develop a lip on their wear surface, which captures the shoes and prevents you from pulling the drum off until you adjust the shoes inward, which you can&amp;#039;t do because, remember, you can&amp;#039;t find the adjusters, or they&amp;#039;re stuck. It&amp;#039;s enough to send you for the Chivas. RELATED: The Evolution of Brakes But by hook or by crook, you get the drum off, allowing you to see that you need to replace the shoes. At which point you join the brotherhood of the Jesus Clip\u2014the term is an ancient one, referring to any spring or clip that, when removed, makes you take the Lord&amp;#039;s name in vain as it whizzes past your head to zip codes unknown. Brake shoes are often paired with stout, difficult-to-install springs that hold the shoes to the car but allow them to pivot and do their job. When dealing with one, it&amp;#039;s easy to launch it and take out your local power grid. When reassembling, it&amp;#039;s wise to clean the adjusters and lube with anti-seize paste. Tip: Those springs and clips are inexpensive. If they&amp;#039;re a rusty mass, replacing them is an easy path toward smoother brake action. And obviously if the wheel cylinder (the hydraulic piece that pushes the shoes into the drums) is leaking, it must be replaced. (Best case: Everything gets coated in brake fluid and your brakes don&amp;#039;t work well. Worst: You lose your brakes entirely and set the car on fire.) Despite their quirks, I find it incredibly satisfying to adjust brake shoes, to take a car that wouldn&amp;#039;t pass inspection and make the handbrake capable of locking the wheels up on the highway. So appreciate the mighty drum. And your parents. But if you need to do the Flintstone thing on their Studebaker, fix it for them, will ya? RELATED: What you need to know about counterfeit Brembo brakes  Rob Siegel (robsiegel.com) is a renaissance wrench from Boston.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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