you gonna put them on the rear?

It ain't gonna matter much.  But I'd like to know how it turns out.

Rear brakes have a lot of squeal which is actually worse if I blow it out with compressed air.  Last time I had the rear wheel off I did some sanding to remove glaze but it didn't really help.  Also have locked up the rear wheel a few times and I've read the grooves help with that, too.

I need to shim my rear pulley and wanted to hold off until I have new brake shoes in hand because I don't know if they are the stock shoes or if a PO replaced with EBC's (didn't note that when I had the wheel off).  If I knew they were already EBC I would just chamfer and groove them myself when I took the wheel off for the pulley shim.  But if they are stock shoes, I want to replace with EBC as long as the rear wheel is off.

Wast of time?  Go ahead and groove and chamfer the shoes no matter if they are stock or EBC?  Bike has about 16k miles so probably plenty of pad left I reckon.

batman wrote on 05/22/17 at 15:23:33:


Yeah, that was my plan but wanted new shoes in hand when I pulled the rear wheel in case what's in there is cooked.  I hate takin' that sucker off!

The slots in the shoes above will move water and dust to the rear of the drum ,not toward the outside plate where the drain slot is located at the bottom.Bad design or wrong shoes for our bike.

JOG, look again,you can flip them all day it's still wrong.flipping them doesn't change the orientation of the slots.think about how they fit in the brake plate, like in the pic above ,if the top shoe was laying flat like the other. the drum covering them would be turning ccw. flipping them over would change nothing, they are the same ,the only way the slots would work is if your sixth gear was reverse.

I don't know if that is a "generic" photo of the brakes shoes - but the rounded end won't fit the Savage.  The end should have a concave end that fits over the post on the brake backing plate.

The way I interpret the grooves.....they are both cut the same direction, and this will result in the top one pushing the water/dust inward - while the bottom one will push the water/dust outward.

To get them both to push the dirt outward....the grooves needed to be cut in opposite directions, and you would have to mount the shoe on the proper side to make it push outward.

Most often the squeal comes from shoes that have been subject to a very rusty drum - and the rust was removed by riding the bike and using the rear brake, and wearing the rust off.  This embeds the rust into the brake shoe lining and contaminates the material.  If a bit of sanding won't eliminate the squeal - then it is time for new shoes!

From EBC:  Both these versions are actually made from the same tool in the factory, rest assure, they are the same size

Regarding the direction of the grooves, isn't it still better to have shoes with the grooves already cut rather than flat surfaces?  As long as the brake dust is getting pushed off to one side it should still be an improvement I would think.

And I won't keep wasting everyone's time with this but I still think the grooves would push the dust outward and away from the drum once installed in the hub.