The other day I was on my way to work in my '90 W-150. Coming to a stop sign I hit the brakes and heard a banging noise followed by losing all pedal pressure. Luckily there was no traffic and I wasn't going very fast anyways so I was able to come to stop by gearing down and pumping the pedal a bunch.

At first I thought the noise was up front, but I looked under the back and noticed one of the E-brake cables hanging down along with a piece of brake line. I looked at the backing plate on the driver side and then I see the wheel cylinder is on the bottom!

Anyways, I get it back home (using the E-brake still working on one wheel which worked surprisingly well) I get the drum off and see the backing plate looks like this...the inner part where it bolts to the housing was pretty rusty but I never thought it would rip off. I actually saw a few small holes in it back when I bought the truck, and I knew I should have replaced it then but I kept putting it off because of the pain of having to pull the axle (9.25), the stinky gear oil etc...Guess I should have done it sooner, and it could have been a lot worse.