Dexter Hydraulic Drum Brake Assembly - Free Backing - 12" - Left Hand - 7,000 lbs

Video Transcript for Dexter Axle Trailer Brakes 23-342 Review

Today we're going to take a look at the Dexter 12" left-hand driver side free backing hydraulic drum break assembly, for 7,000 lbs axles. Our hydraulic drum brake assemblies are designed for use with surge type trailer brake actuators, this one happens to be a free backing design which let's you back up without engaging your trailer brakes, even if the actuator is activated. Basically, the hydraulic pressure is contained by the wheel cylinder and it has a fall-away shoe, it will diminish the shoe drag while backing up. You can usually tell by looking at them it's a free backing, the design of that fall-away shoe has a D-shape to it. This is a manual adjustment brake, so it does require periodic manual adjustment. Right down here is the adjustment gear that you just turn to adjust it, and you would access that usually through the rear backing plate.

They have an access hole right here down at the bottom. What's nice on this assembly, if you notice, they usually leave that hole open, here they've actually put a nice plug in there to cover that whole. Keeps any dirt and grime out of your brake assembly and off your brake shoes. This part will include the left-hand driver side brake assembly, and if you notice it also comes with the mounting nuts that have the lock washers attached to them. Basically, on 12" sized brake assemblies, the bolts are already attached to the brake mounting flange, so when you slide this onto those bolts all you have to do is take the nut with the integrated lock washer and put it in there and tighten it down. A few specs on this. The diameter is 12", the width is 2", and where they measure that, the diameter will be from this shoe all the way over to this shoe.

You can see, there's your 12" diameter, and the 2" wide would be the width of the pad on the brake shoe, there's your 2" wide. We had mentioned, you can see the five holes here, so it does use a brake mounting flange bolt pattern of five bolt holes. It does require the use of 12" brake drums. The wheel size that will fit on this is 14 and a half inches, 15 inches and 16 inches, and again it's designed for axles rated up to 7,000 lbs. The last thing I just want to show you is how to tell that this is the left-hand driver side design. On a new assembly, of course, it will have a sticker that will show you that, but if the sticker wasn't there, easiest way to tell is just look at the length of the pad on the brake shoes.

This pad goes from here to here, over here it goes from here to here, so this is a lot shorter shoe or pad. The shorter pad would be the primary shoe, that will face the front of the trailer, so that will tell you that this goes on the left-hand driver's side. That should do it for the review on the Dexter 12" left-hand driver side free braking hydraulic drum break assembly, for 7,000 lbs axles.