I am a life long tinkerer that just bought a 1992 Daihatsu S80LP. It has a bunch of problems and the first one that I am solving is the brakes. They were essentially non-existent so I pulled the rear drums to adjust the the shoes. To my surprise, there was fluid in 1 of the units. The caliper is leaking. I have tracked down the caliper and new shoes since I will be in there. However, I cannot figure out how to get the lug nut plate ( I doubt that is what it is called) off so I can work on all the brake parts behind it. It is older so there isn't a castle nut to release it from the axle. There are holes in the plate to get to 4 screws connecting the back drum plate to the axle housing. I removed those 4 screw and it is stuck on there pretty good so I put those screws back on. I don't want to make the problem worse. I have spent about 15 hours in the forums and on YouTube to no obvious solution. My best guess is that the lug nut plate is attached permanently to the axel shaft and I need to take off the 4 screws to pull the whole thing off (including the corresponding axle). Just need someone to confirm before I break into it. Here is a picture of my rear brake assembly. Any and all help to get the lug nut plate off would be greatly appreciated.
Since no one has replied yet, I’ll make a guess. In the center of the hub, there are two tabs. Do these play a role? Is there a way to use them to unscrew the assembly? Or, do they help hold while you do so? Hope this helps? Also, try using the Japanese characters for s80 hub in a YouTube search. I am following a Japanese Content Creator that has shown some work on my s83p and it has been helpful and entertaining. He uses Google translate in closed captioning.
Well, drum brakes can be like that. You could remove the axle but thats what you almost did when you remove the screws holding the backing plate on. Usually with drum brakes you just have to work around the axle flange. Looks like hijets don't make that very easy.
Thanks for the advice. I talked with someone from https://minitruckpart.com and indeed the half axle comes out with the axle flange. You have to loosen the 4 bolts and then use a slide hammer to loosen the axle. After you get it all out you can work on it. I am diving into this next week and will report back.
If you have the same setup as I have. S80LP 2 wheel drive (or similar as the pictures above. meaning without an axle nut holding the wheel hub flange on) then swap the brakes without taking the axle off. I learned that the hard way on one side but swapped the other side brakes without any issues. It is really cramped but you can do it fairly easy once you figure out where everything goes. Here are the resources that helped me in case it helps someone else. You can apply this to any HiJet drum brake job. When I started I couldn't get the hubs off so I learned how to with this video. I used this video to learn where everything went even though he had a model that you could remove the hub flange. On my model you couldn't remove it without pulling the entire axle rod out so it was a little cramped. You can still do everything with the hub flange in the way. I even replaced the wheel cylinder with the hub flange on. Once I got it all together I had no clue how to adjust the shoes so I learned that in this video. Only problem was this adjustment method was different than mine. So I kept looking and found this video that has a similar adjustment type. The key was making sure you line up the opening in the hub with the adjuster so you can make the adjustments with the hub on. I should have taken pictures or a video but I am not that smart. Hopefully this guide will help someone else.
