If you have any familiarity with cars, you’ll know that drum brakes are an obsolete relic of the past in the auto industry. And as a result of that fact, your Bukhanka has manual drum brakes all the way around if its unmodified (maybe a worthy future post). While these seem very intimidating to work on, worry not, they’re actually very simple. Hopefully this guide will help clear things up for you a bit. I would also strongly recommend readjusting them after around every 500 miles or so. Yes this is annoying, but the reasoning is because they don’t have auto adjusters like newer drum brakes do, so it is important to keep them adjusted, especially given that all 4, 5 if you include the parking brake, of your brakes are reliant on this frequent adjustment in order to stop properly.

A picture of the lobed stud located in your wheel cylinder

Once you have the van lifted up, you’ll see that there are 2 different adjusters for each wheel cylinder, and yes the Bukhanka has 2 wheel cylinders per front drum, more on that here. So in total, there are 4 adjustments you can make per each drum, front and back. When you install new shoes on the brakes, adjusting the nuts on the eccentric studs are mandatory. In our case of a simple brake adjustment, it is not, and I would strongly recommend not touching them unless absolutely necessarily for the sake of simplicity. The 2 adjusting bolts, as shown below, have a 17mm head. Starting with front, spin the wheel forward and turn the wrench (I prefer socket) in the same direction. Once the wheel stops, slightly back it off until the wheel spins freely. Rinse and repeat for the rear adjuster, only backwards this time. Congratulations! Поздравляю!, that is it repeat for the next 3 wheels and you have fully adjusted your brakes. A few things I wished I would have known:

1. If the wheel is stuck regardless of what you do, the problem is not with the adjustment, but with something in the brake system, warped drum, bad lines, stuck wheel cylinder, etc…
2. The front adjusters are a pain in the @!# to get to sometimes due to the front axle, using a socket with a universal joint socket or sometimes even taking off the tire can make this job way easier.
3. The adjusters for the rear wheels are the exact same as the front, just without a bunch of crap in the way.
4. The wheel should spin freely, but not too freely, I try to loosen the adjuster as little as possible in order to maximize brakeage, 1/8 – 1/4 of a turn has been my sweet spot.

Thanks to this article for the pics and general info, also available in English, albeit with a shaky translation from Russian. https://aubito.ru/en/uaz-car/how-to-replace-front-wheel-brake-pads-uaz-3151-31512-31514-31519