Brake failure problem

[merdat]

My m8 was driving along the road one day recently when a car came out of a side road and he had to apply the brakes. Alas 'no brakes' so he had to swerve up a grass bank to avoid a collision. When he got the car back to the house it was evident that he had lost all his brake fluid. Today we managed to get some time to have a look at the vehicle (no time before this as installing a new 'condensing boiler for his central heating system ' -great thing by the way as 97% efficient). On removal of the 'brake drum we found that one of the 'shoes' had slipped off the end of the brake cyclinder and the piston had come out releasing all the fluid (a strange thing to have happened) . The brake linings were a bit worn but not to bad. My m8 had the drums off a few weeks ago to check them and lubricate the 'self adjusting mechanisms prior to MOT. We nearly failed to notice the fact that when we replaced the shoes that they were not sitting as flush as they should have been . It was only when we replaced the shoes on the other side of the vehicle that we realised the retaining spring clips midway along the shoes ( gold coloured things in the pics ) were weaker on the side which was giving the problem. These weak clips were not holding the brake shoes at a correct angle and had caused the 'leading shoe' to slip of the side of the cycliner piston. In the old days i'm sure there was a notch in the brake piston that the shoe used to locate into to prevent any possibility of this happening. Anyway we fitted new retaining clips along with a new cyclinder and also new shoes so hopefully everything should be ok now. Never seen this happen before so I thought that I would post a couple of pics.