Time to start putting this car back together.

Starting from a bare backing plate. Now for those that find drum brakes frustrating to assemble, here's my easy steps to put this back together without frustration.

New wheel cylinder with hardware and I use anti-seize on everything.

Installed, no biggy there.

Take the secondary shoe and attach the parking brake cable to it and let it dangle.

Insert the push rods in the wheel cylinder and insert the shoe retaining pin for the rear secondary shoe through the plate and stage the retaining spring and cups atop and put the pliers in your rear pocket and then install that rearward shoe onto the plate and everything is within easy reach now to assemble.

Again stage the parts for the primary shoe. This one is a little more cumbersome with the parking brake equalizer bar to contend with.

Pretty straightforward so far. The rest is really easy now.

Install the upper shoe guide at the top, loop in the adjuster cable and install the primary shoe spring.

Install the adjuster cable guide and the secondary shoe return spring. This is the tool I use and it makes life easy with these springs. It's really old and has seen many drum brake repairs, but works a treat. I do believe it may be an old Lisle tool. I would encourage anyone doing drum brakes to buy one.

Install the star wheel adjuster, the adjusting lever and stage the lower spring.

After the spring is installed you can pry up on the adjusting lever and loop in the cable.

Easy and no frustrations. Just adjust the star wheel so the shoes barely touch the drum when installed and call it done.

New over the axle brake hose.

For now this is where I'll leave the rear brakes, time to assemble the front brakes. Both rear brake drum assemblies are done, it just needs new brake lines from this hose to each wheel cylinder.

Starting with a cleaned spindle.

Caliper brackets go on first.

Ford used safety wire on these bolts which took me by surprise. Now Ford just took some bailing wire and twisted it on these bolts like a garbage bag tie. I took the time to make it a little neater. I had to learn how to do this on our airplane.