Rear drum brake cleaning

So my friend Piotr from the Vespa Cafe also has a PX 125. He has been having some issues with his and wanted to swap out some parts with mine to try to identify the problem.

This was a great opportunity for me to look at a couple of things on my bike and clean it up a bit.

Everything is so dirty. First order of business for me is to have a look at the rear brakes, they are very sticky and driving me kinda nuts. I'm sort of expecting to find worn out or contaminated brake shoes.

Taking the rear wheel off is easy, makes sense. I was shocked at how loose the wheel nuts were. Once the wheel is off, straighten out the cotter pin, being careful not to break it as it's going to be reused. Once it's straightened, pull it out with a pair of pliers

Underneath that cover is a big nut. Forgot to take a picture. That nut was crazy torqued. If you are doing this by yourself, put the scooter in gear, find a way to press on the rear brake pedal, stabilize the scooter and use a breaker bar with a huge pipe extension to get this nut loose.

Once the nut and washer are off, the brake drum slides right off no problem. I was again surprised to find that other than a little brake dust, everything looked great. I just sprayed a little brake cleaner in here and that's it.

Brake shoes look fine, lots of life left

Brake drum looks ok too, just cleaned it up a little bit. No major scratches or anything.

So just clean it up and put it back together

Nice to see that there actually is a wheel under all that dirt, grime and oil



I word of caution on reassembly! These bolts shown with the red arrows where the wheels attached to the brake drum are extremely delicate! I snapped one straight off using a torque wrench set to 25 Nm. I'm now driving on 4 bolts. I think I may have to drill this bolt out and use a loose nut and bolt to fix the wheel properly.

Once reassembled, I drove home. The brakes work fine now, nice and smooth. It's actually a huge difference. In fact, it seems like too much of a difference from just cleaning the brakes. I suppose...you can lift the front or the rear of the scooter with your hands, maybe it's just small and light enough that a little bit of brake dust and water is enough to make the drums lock up?