One reason that I've been pushing to get 4-wheel disc brakes on my 1967 220 is that I understand them well and they are easy to service - not so with drums.
Well they are not too bad, just very complex looking.

So.. my 1968 122S has drum rear brakes and from the looks of things they had not been serviced for the 22 years that the car sat in a dry barn. It took *A LOT* of torque to finally free the passenger side drum. But in contrast, the driver's drum came off with little effort. I was under the impression that it was bad if they came off easily... Can anyone explain what problem that indicates?

Of note, the castle nut on that axle was nearly stripped out. I swapped it for a good nut and replaced the missing washer from my spare parts stash..

also, the rear brakes and e-brake were almost non-existent, but the pads had a lot of life on them and the drums were neither pitted nor scored. Unsure of just how these should set, I dialed them out until the drums still cleared the pads and turned they smoothly AND when I pulled the e-brake, they were so tight I could not turn the rear wheels with a crowbar.

Does that sound correct? I took the car on a quiet jaunt through an open lot and the braking was much improved. Still... don't want to trust these without being sure I've got them right. Did I do this correctly?

More questions to follow of course... But it's a nice feeling every time I sit down to fix a small problem on this car. I've addressed a lot of small issues and each issue has been successfully corrected in the space of a few hours.