snufkin

You're absolutely right - I see the little cross-top clips on the back (see picture). What I took to be raised parts of the back plate must have been the raised plastic dots. I don't know if I want to take them all apart again to replace the plastic bits, but thanks for the info - I'll know for next time.

Good point - I'll take a look and report back.

Interesting! I've put mine back together otherwise I'd take a picture to show you, but I'm pretty sure mine just had 3 flat raised sections of the back plate that the shoe runs on. One of the shoes was seized rusted to them (the cause of MOT failure for brake efficiency), and surely that wouldn't happen against plastic. There was no recess or hole in the middle of each one that the plastic glide pieces would need to be pushed into. I put a dab of brake grease on each of these before re-assembly. Mine's an early model, a Y reg, 2001, so maybe they changed to a better design with the plastic bits soon after? Thanks for the info though. It will surely be useful for other people who read this.

I changed my brake shoes ok (this guide very useful, much appreciated), but as I was putting the stuff back together I noticed the 2 retaining springs I have are slightly different - one is longer than the other (something like 5 turns instead of 4), so it gets more compressed (as the distance between back plate and shoe is the same for leading and trailing shoes) and therefore holds the shoe tighter against the back plate. It was the same on each side - 1 longer spring and 1 shorter one. Looking at the pictures above, pictures of spring kits and documentation at http://www.matthewames.co.uk/briskoda/20090410_rear_drums/octy_rear_drums.pdf they all show the 2 retaining springs as identical. So my question is, should I put the longer spring on the leading or trailing shoe? Or does it not matter? Or maybe I just have odd one and everyone else's are identical.