Undoing brake unions / assembling shoes

[Toaster Pilot]

Yet again I see myself about to take on a car that needs new rear shoes and that means it'll no doubt need wheel cylinders too.

Every single fking time I have an utter mare with this, undoing the bloody rusted seized unions, rounding them off, having to replace st loads of brake pipe because I've ruined it

So, mechanical gods of PH, what protips do you have for doing this without such carnage? Heat? Penetrating oil? More swearing? Better tools?

Also - assembling brake shoes with those bloody springs.... there's got to be a knack to it but is it just a matter of experience / trial and error?

[Toaster Pilot]

I have two flare spannners, one like this:



and one like this:



Never have much success with either!

[Toaster Pilot]

paintman said:

The shoe hold downs can be a PITA

forgot about those things

Is the tool actually any good? They're not particularly expensive, probably cheaper than a decent small set of mole grips which I don't currently own (only a crap small pair which are really really bad)

[Toaster Pilot]

I normally use "TripleQX Maintenance Spray" (poor mans WD40 from ECP) but I'll buy some Plus Gas just for this. Had good results with "WD40 Professional Penetrating Oil" (much different to the normal blue tin stuff) but it's as expensive if not more so than PG and I've seen so many people rave about it now