Rusty rears

[piglet]

Pulled out of Pwllheli the other day and there was a noise like the trailer had unhitched and was dragging on the road.
Trailer was fine, nothing on the ground but there were lovely graunchy noises from the offside rear.
Having carefully got home I've pulled the brakes out and the rear discs don't look like they have been working at all, except for the long trip home from NW Wales.
I can't find a load balancer so does it just rely on the ABS to keep a lid on things?
What could cause the rears to do nothing for yonks then just start working again?
The O/S is much worse than the N/S but they both need new discs & pads.
Drum shoes look fine. Calipers seem fine.

Thanks in advance gents.

[Doggy]

My first (52 plate) estate definitely had a load valve - the MOT man's friend had to stand on the tow ball to get the back brakes to work enough for the test.

Oddly, it passed the next 3 MOT's without.

[piglet]

Where was your load valve Doggy?
Mr. Haynes says it would be attached to the anti-roll bar via a spring, think that's how the 405 was.
Definitely nothing there, following the pipes from the calipers right back to where they disappear over the fuel tank and there's nothing that I would recognise as a load valve.

Having said the calipers are fine, the main slide pin on the O/S was almost seized AND the pads didn't want to come out.
Could it have just been caused by being left too long?

[steve_earwig]

Service Box says they only got the compensator if they didn't get ABS

My first (52 plate) estate definitely had a load valve - the MOT man's friend had to stand on the tow ball to get the back brakes to work enough for the test.

May be it just couldn't get enough traction on the rollers?

[piglet]

New discs & pads and detailed use of copper grease.
Will see if it happens again.

Back plates in damned poor condition for a car that's just 11 yrs young.
One of the shoe retainers fell out of the drum in bits, so fitted all new but the same one just pinged straight through the backplate hole. Replaced with a long M5 screw and a couple of nylocs.

I want my 405 back.

[gumby6371]

The pads not wanting to come out suggests the sliders are in need of a clean, I'd be inclined to clean everything up and see if that rectifies the problem before fitting new stuff unless the discs and pads are fubar'd.
Check the pistons move freely while you have everything apart.

[piglet]

Had the slide pins out and gave them a good grease up.
Scraped, filed, sanded and greased the pad retaining pins and guides.
Pistons seemed to move nice and smooth, so left well alone.

Discs were totally cattled.