The Rear Brakes (or, lack of...)

So, Tim finally managed to remove the screws holding the rear brake drums together (just realised i talk about myself in the 3rd person quite a lot on this blog, so from hereon in i shall refer to the party(s) in question as 'we', to reform to the more autonomous virtue of this project, although Paul's buggered off to Spain for a week, so in this case, it was all me.)
Apparently, applying loads of grease spray and simply battering it with a hammer for 5 minutes appears to have done the trick. We (I) digress, and will now show you what we (I) first saw upon entry into the (new) world of rear brake drums...


Apart from the obvious amount of rust and carbon (we (I) hope it's carbon - there's a slim possibility those mental French used asbestos in the brake shoes), they appeared to be OK. However, the bible gives indications of minimum thicknesses of brake shoes of 6mm. Shall we (I) show you what it actually is?



Yes, i hear you say, "bloody hell" - it appears they are 1mm on one side and about 1/2mm on the other - that would explain the slight grinding noise we were hearing then! They'll need to be changed then...