1984 Dodge Rampage Drum Brakes

There is not much out there on rebuilding the drum brakes on the 1984 Dodge Rampage. (Let’s be honest there isn’t much out there on any type of repair on the Dodge Rampage…) so I figured it would be good to get a few pictures out there on what a freshly rebuilt brake drum looks like.

First off, here is what the drums started out like. The car only has 50K miles on it, so there is a small chance these are either the original brakes, or maybe the second set. Pieces had rusted off, springs missing, and a very thick coat of oil and muck across all of it.

The other thing to point out is that when I removed the drums from the car, the drums and the hub looked to be one piece. However they do separate. I found that using a hydraulic press and alternating pressing the studs out one at a time was able to release the hub from the drum as you can see below.

Given the age of the parts, I found a drum brake hardware kit at RockAuto and replaced all the parts (including the wheel cylinder).

This matches up with the repair manual image.

One thing I did notice is that I believe that the red spring for the adjuster lever is in the wrong hole, so is most likely not tensioned enough. Be sure to use the proper retaining hole when installing the red spring.

You can check out the entire video of me replacing these brakes here: