I discovered the leak while washing my truck one weekend. While cleaning my right rear rim I noticed some "wetness" to the dirt/dust buildup on the inside of the rim looking through the spokes (I have the OEM cast aluminum rims). Crawling under the truck and inspecing the inside of the rim revealed oil all over the rim and tire.
I immediately thought I had a leaking brake slave, but brake level was topped off. Then I thought rear axle seal and check my differential oil level. Oddly enough, it seemed right where it was supposed to be. I guess it doesn't take that much of a volume of gear oil to make a mess of one's rim/tire.
I opened up the rear drum and could actually see gear oil leaking from the bearing/hub area. My entire drum assembly including the shoes and springs were covered with wet brake dust.
Closed her back up and dropper my truck off at the dealer, knowing it would be covered by the powertrain warranty.
I hear yah, I spent most of the weekend washing/claying/waxing and chaning the fluids in my wife's car...
FWIW, I replaced my differential oil with Amsoil 75W-90 at 10K miles. Others in TundraSolutions have wondered if the synthetic oil seals contributes to oil seal failure.
When my oil seal leaked, I had not experienced any effects on braking, although during the period of the leak, I did not carry anything significantly heavy in my bed.
After the fact, because I did not notice any loss or pull in my brakes, I wondered if my rear brake shoes were not adjusted correctly. However, I regularly use my parking brake and the parking brake pedal engages the brakes quite well. In addition, when I had opened up both drums, the shoes were wearing quite normally, leading me to believe that they were indeed adjusted properly.
I noticed that there appears to be a TSB for a rear axle seal re-design affecting at least some model year Tundras. Are you familiar with the details of the TSB?
Rear Drums are used by Toyota because they are cheaper to make than disc brakes. To make them right would require bigger discs and calipers to handle the loads that Toyota wants to advertise to be able to haul.
Fade resistance is a major issue when towing not just sports cars. Try coming down the rockies with a 5 ton trailer full of cattle and "enjoy" the thrill of no brakes on a downhill run with tight turns. You will only take that thrill ride once (if you lived) then you will want BIG disc brakes all around. The 11" discs on 4 corners are not capable of handling a 2 ton truck pulling 10,000lbs in a trailer load on a steep downhill incline even with trailer brakes.
Drum Brakes are used on Big Rigs because they use AIR for braking and not hydraulics. This is because the trailers use Air brakes. Hydraulics are great on closed systems but bad on open systems like Semi Tractor/trailer rigs. They use very large air cylinders/pistons/levers to drive very large brake shoes. If a tractor trailer rig could use a closed system then I promise you that they would pick disc over drums.
If drums were so great the the 747 and A380 would use them instead of discs. Aircraft have to have the most reliable components and disc brakes have been used on planes since the 50's.
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2000 Tundra 4X4 Limited - ARB Sahara Bar, 265R75-16 BF Goodrich MudTerrain, NWOR Springs, Blistein shocks, K&N Cool Air Intake. JBA Headers & Dual exhaust
Aircraft have disk brakes because of the lighter weight as well as superior cooling.
On a heavy truck, school bus, gasoline tanker truck, etc., drums brakes work fine because they're plenty big, and the driver knows to use their engine as the primary means of retarding their speed. And, drum brakes work better for parking brakes on a heavily loaded pickup or pickup with a trailer hitched.
If you overheated your brakes on that downhill with the trailer load of cattle, you likely didn't downshift low enough and early enough, and/or were overloaded. You should be in a low enough gear so you can get off the brakes periodically and let them cool. If you need to go down in 1st gear because of the grade and the load, well, that's what you need to do.
Ken
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You get what you inspect
Not what you expect.
S&S Long Tube Hi-Torque Headers
TRD/Eaton Limited Slip Differential
Gibson exhaust system
Hellwig Rear Antisway Bar
Sylvania Xenarc H.I.D. X1010 Auxiliary Low Beam Driving Lights
Schaeffer Engine Oil, ATF, Differential Oil
Racor LFS22825 full-flow transmission filter
Towing a 21' Bigfoot trailer using a Hensley Arrow hitch, Jordan brake controller, McKesh mirrors
If down shifting was all that is needed then Semi tractor/trailer rigs would not need a Jake brake. My tractor has lower gears than any Pickup truck would have and still it is not enough on some long steep downhill grades. Without a jake brake I would have ended up in a big pile of twisted metal at the bottom of some mountain. So downshifting and going slow alone is not enough for some situations. Automotive makers have to worry about getting sued over design and manufacturering defects. Drum brakes can be made cheaper and meet all the marketing and minimum safety parameters. They do not offer the absolute best performance, but they get the job done and avoid lawsuits.
Personally, I would never use my truck to haul a 10,000 lb trailer, even though the manual says I can. I have used it to haul 6,000lb loads on several occations with no worries or problems. I have hauled cars and trucks on a trailer from California and Florida to Texas several times. I gone through 3 sets of rotors and 6 sets of pads & 1 set of drums and 2 sets of shoes in the 90,000 miles that I have driven my Tundra.
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2000 Tundra 4X4 Limited - ARB Sahara Bar, 265R75-16 BF Goodrich MudTerrain, NWOR Springs, Blistein shocks, K&N Cool Air Intake. JBA Headers & Dual exhaust
It use to be that you came down the grade in the lowest gear you went up
but that has changed since the use of bigger engines.
As for a jake they certainly make a difference but years ago we ran Donner
when it was two lane without a jake, it's all a matter of how you drive and keeping the brakes adjusted.
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