My father in law bought me a 2002 Recon ES. It had been rode hard, but overall still a good machine for the money. The brakes are gone on the back and I have to bleed them on the front. On the rear brakes I have the drum pulled apart and have the new brake shoes, but I am not 100% sure how to take the old shoes off without breaking something. Can someone tell me how this is done please. Also if anyone has an owners manual or knows where I can get one I would appreciate it.

 

if its like other hondas, just remove the cotter pins and retainer plate, then with a skrewdriver or two remove the springs that hold the shoes together. then bam you should be able to take the shoes off

hope this helps you, i bought my manual from denniskirk.com. you could try there $30ish

 

There is no cotter pin or retainer clip that I can find, but the shoes were nothing but metal and there was a lot of brake debris so I might not see them. Best I can tell the shoes are just resting using the springs to hold them together and in place.

 

you know you may not need to bleed the front brakes

They can be adjusted with a flat head screw driver

Pull the lil rubber plugs and lift the front end off the ground and spin the wheel till the lil hole lines up with looks like a gear

Take that flat head and rotate the lil brake tensioner up till it gets tight the spin the wheel a lil bit to the other side of the caliper and do the same thing

back off of them a lil if the tire wont spin

do the same for the other tire

 

i avent monkied with the rear brakes, do you have to take the big 2 main nuts off the rear axcle to get to the break pads.

 

I have adjusted the front brakes as you described and still nothing. I started bleeding them, and was getting better response so I hope bleeding them properly will take care of that. You do have to take the 2 main nuts off. Once you get them off you take the bolts out of the brake drum, remove the cables and slide the cover toward the wheel. Mine was tough to get lose, but it will come just be careful not to break anything parts are expensive.

 

Ok i bought some front and rear brakes but i was told to just leave the rear brakes alone since the recons brakes go bad so often.

 

Is there a bearing in there that ya got to remove in the rear.

 

After I removed the nuts the bearing slid right out. I don't know much about the recon but I rely heavily on my rear brakes. If these don't work well then I will get a disc brake conversion kit. If you go to www.crotchrocket.com and click on OEM parts you can choose rear brake drum and it will show you a basic diagram of all the parts. That was my first step to know how to take it apart.

 

Be sure to post how well it went , i may work on mine sunday after ya tell me how it went.

I have the book on it but didnt show those axle nuts in great detail , so i went and bought a few big creasent wrences but havent tackled it yet, are those axle nuts reverse thread or the come off counter clock wise. was wondering that also cuz they were real tough but didnt want to be tighting um if they were reverse thread.

Matt