Stainless Steel Shim Takes Up Wear In Brake Bands

Stainless Steel Shim Takes Up Wear In Brake Bands FARM SHOP Handy Hints 21-3-30 Dale Spoerl, Elizabeth, Ill.: "When the brakes on my International 560 tractor wore out I came up with a quick, inexpensive way to solve the problem - I made a stainless steel shim that takes up the wear in the brake bands. The brake drum has three bands that hold the discs in place and keep them centered. The bands are about 3/4 in. wide and stand about 1 1/2 in. outside the housing. The lower band was wearing especially bad. Whenever I put the brakes on they grabbed hard and sometimes wouldn't release unless I backed up. "I made the shim by using a special tool to bend a .035 thick section of stainless steel into a U-shape, then clamped the shim onto the bottom band so that it can't move back and forth. I didn't weld the shim in place because I wasn't really sure that the idea would work. However, I installed the shims on the brakes of two different tractors and haven't had any problems with either of them."

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