2000 Silverado Parking Brake Adjustment

I need to adjust the parking brake on my Z71. I know from other posting that I need to perform these steps:

1) Back off parking brake cable adjustment 2) Remove rear rotors 3) Adjust the parking brake shoes on each side 4) Readjust parking brake cable

My question is:

Where is the adjustment for the parking brake cable? I haven't looked for it yet and maybe it would be obvious with 5 minutes of looking but with my luck I wouldn't find it and it would then take 8 hours to get some answers to my post. Is it under the dash on the pedal? Under the body? At the parking brake shoes?

Is it just me or do the disc brakes on these trucks seem to last forever? I have 75k miles and my pads still have at least half of the meat left. Everything seems to be wearing evenly and absolutely no pull or shudder while braking. At this rate I'll only need one brake job for the life of the truck.

Of course this convenience is offset by the piss poor design of the parking brake. Now I have to do all of the labor for a rear brake job anyway. I might as well replace the pads while I'm there. I wouldn't worry about this but they caught it on inspection so I gotta do it.

Why didn't they integrate the parking brake into the disc system? I can envision the equivalent of a big pair of vise grips on each side holding the pads to the rotor. Is this "drum within a rotor" design common for 4 wheel disc systems?

Thanks in advance for the advice, Chris

You do not need to back off the park brake cable. The cable does have what appears to be an adjustment, but it is not used as an adjustment. You will notice that the cable is bottomed right out on the threaded section. Just remove the rear rotors, and have a look at your park brake shoes. If you have never had them apart, the chances are very high that you will need new shoes, along with the updated retainers that allow the shoes to float better and will stop them from wearing prematurely.

The park brake pedal assembly is "autoadjusting", and the park brake shoes themselves have star wheel type adjusters. There is "no" cable adjustment.

Yes, they do appear to last a long time. The only weak spot is the right rear inner brake pad. For whatever reason, these always wear out first and wear out fairly rapidly. A lot does depend on what kind of conditions you drive in. If you are not bombing around in severe mud and dirt conditions, this is less likely to happen.

Unless the pads are worn out, why bother? It only takes a few minutes to get the rotors off anyways. Just take off the two bolts that hold the caliper and knuckle to the rear axle, and move the entire assembly out of the way.

Believe me, no matter how shitty you might think this system is, the older systems that had integral ratcheting assemblies within the rear disc calipers were worse. GM has gone to this system pretty much across the board, same system is used on the Corvettes and Cadillacs.

Ian