[Rust-O-Matic]

Thanks again for the input, guys. Last night was a success... mostly. After I got the hub and drum separated, I could see the noise was caused by the wheel studs juuuuust barely rubbing the spring on the self adjuster arm. I adjusted the shoes out a couple of threads (it started out all the way retracted), and made sure the spring was pulled as close as possible to the arm with a pair of vice grips. Problem solved!

The bad news is, separating the drum and hub didn't go exactly as I would have liked it to. I drilled the two flat head screws out in the drill press, no problem. Then I put a piece of scrap steel over the hub and attempted to knock it out of the drum with my trusty sledge-o-matic. No dice. So I put it in my press, and started pumping. I have never seen cast iron flex as much as the flange on the drum did before the two pieces came apart! I thought for sure it was going to shatter into a thousand pieces. It didn't though, and slowly came apart. Although it seems to have distorted the drum just enough to make it not want to go back onto the hub now. No big loss though, I really should have bought new drums to start with. I was just trying to avoid throwing another $100 at it.

Once I got everything put back together (minus the drum that won't go back onto the wheel studs) I realized the hole the spindle dust cap goes into got a little boogered up in the process, and now the cap won't go back in because it's out of round. It doesn't appear to have affected the bearing area of the hub though, just the very outer lip, so I think I can just clean it up with a carbide bur or file.

One step forward and three steps back. At least that god awful noise is gone though I guess. I'll get new drums and dust caps ordered soon, and go ahead and separate the other side's drum/hub in the meantime. Then it's on to making new lines, and putting the new double master cylinder in.