Thanks,
John

 

Take the nut off, notice how "tight" the nut is and slip the whole assembly off. Assemble is reverse order.

 

Yes, the magnets will wear out.

If you will examine the bottom-outer corner, this is where the wear will occur.

The magnets will wear into a plastic lining just before wearing into the copper windings.

The upper portion of the magnet will never touch the hub.

If you can catch the magnets when they wear into the plastic, before they wear into the copper, they can be turned over and ran just as long again with no loss of braking ability.

 

Look useable to me. Would be a good idea to take the minute or two to clean everything and repack.

You can download owner's manuals from Al-Ko or Dexter that show wear limits, and how to properly adjust.

http://www.al-kousa.com/

http://www.dexteraxle.com/

Both are worth downloading, regardless of what brand you have.

 

And, put on new grease seals - - definite must.

 

There's a place just up the road from me called Agri Supply that sells the whole backing plate with new linings, magnets, and the works for about $80 each if I remember right. May want to look into that deal.

 

I lightened up that first picture, and then you could see it looks like the shoes are pretty good. Assuming the rest look like that, I think you are good to go with just cleaning them up and repack (absolutely get new seals).

I agree, though, that if you do need to replace them doing the whole backing plate is the way to go. Costs a little more, but saves a bunch of time, and you get new pivots, hardware, magnets, shoes...

Anyhow, let us know how you make out.

 

Whenever we, at my work, find a bad magnet or cracked brake shoes (from heat) we always replace the whole backing plate which comes with new shoes, new magnets everything like Dieseldude4x4 said. We generally sell the 10" backing plates for 69.99 a piece and the 12" ones for 79.99 a piece.