1999 Parking Brake

My parking brake quit working at 90K, and I haven't had the ambition to tear into it yet. Does it consist of a small drum brake assembly inside the rotor like I suspect? Is there an adjustment possible inside, or is it a replace only affair?

Thanks.

Reply to
JD
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vehicle make and model pls

Reply to
KJ

'99 Silverado, Z71. I can't believe I forgot to mention that, but I did just wake up...

Reply to
JD

"JD" wrote

Here's my quick test on these park brake shoes. Push the pedal to the floor (park brake pedal) and if it won't hold the truck, you can be certain that one or both of the brake shoes are worn out. Yes, there is an adjustment at the brake shoe, there also "appears" to be an adjustment at the cable, but in fact it's not an adjustment, it's simply there so that you can "back off" the cable if necessary.

Customers often complained that there seemed to be no good reason why the park brake shoes were worn, as they never used them. Initially, I often thought that they probably just had driven off with the park brake engaged, but there is a light and a lot of "dinging" that accompanies this type of action, so it's highly unlikely. It turns out that GM screwed up the design of the small retainer that holds the park brake shoes to the backing plate. It holds too much pressure on the park brake shoe and does not allow it to float properly inside the hat section of the rotor. So it just sits up against the hat section and gets worn down.

The fix is to replace both shoes and install the new updated retainers that come along with the new shoe kits. Often you will also find that the drum surface is all rusted up, just go after it with some sand paper and clean it up as best you can. There is a small adjuster at the open end of the shoe, adjust this until you can just slide the rotor over the shoe.

The new retainers put less of a load on the shoe, and allow it to float around and center itself inside the drum. Less shoe wear occurs (ok, supposedly less wear occurs, as with every other GM "fix".....we must give it some time to prove itself)

Here is a picture of one of the shoes, and the two style retainers. Upper retainer is the new style, lower retainer is the old style. By the way, the shoe will come over the axle flange, you just have to position it right, and hold your tongue in the correct position.

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Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Reply to
Dave Shepherd

"Dave Shepherd" wrote

Dave, it's the same basic setup, but for whatever reason, I haven't seen any problems with the Trailblazers...(yet). Did you actually have the rear rotors right off so that you could manually adjust the park brake shoes?

There is a procedure for resetting the auto adjusting feature at the park brake lever, but I have yet to see one that really needed this adjustment.

All of these drum in hat style of park brakes feel as though you are pushing the pedal all the way to floor and nothing is happening. With new shoes, properly adjusted, they still feel this way, but they do hold the vehicle. Just the design I guess. I did hear one of the service advisors telling a customer that they felt this way because of the "overcentering" spring on the rear park brake shoes. I had a good laugh at his expense. If you are a retired SM, then you would be quite familiar with the BS that some service advisors love to use on customers.

I guess fiction is often easier to sell then the truth.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Reply to
Dave Shepherd

"Dave Shepherd" wrote

I just came off a particularly frustrating week with the "NFF" problems. It's really unbelievable sometimes the kind of complaints that we have to deal with. Fortunately, our service manager and shop foreman are extremely good about paying the techs whether or not they can get diagnosis time from GM or not. I've worked at other dealerships where it was impossible to get road test time, as a result....I simply refused to road test.

Reply to
shiden_kai

"shiden_kai" wrote

I just came off a particularly frustrating week with the "NFF" problems. It's really unbelievable sometimes the kind of complaints that we have to deal with. Fortunately, our service manager and shop foreman are extremely good about paying the techs whether or not they can get diagnosis time from GM or not. I've worked at other dealerships where it was impossible to get road test time, as a result....I simply refused to road test.

Whoops...I didn't finish the post. Anyway, the service advisors often need to be reminded to try to weed out the complaints that are often "normal". It's always funny to see the complaints that customers come up with.....these same complaints would simply not come up if they had to pay for the diagnosis time. But since it's under warranty, they will complain about even normal stuff.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Reply to
Dave Shepherd

Reply to
Dave Shepherd

"Dave Shepherd" wrote

What a wonderful and novel idea....(grin). Our shop foremen (we have three) are too busy, and the SM (a good guy) seems to have to much paperwork to do road tests.

Ah well, at least they will pay us.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Are the new retainers avaliable by themselves ? I had to change the parking brake shoes on my "99 Z71 and the replacement shoes came with the old style retainers , not the new ones shown in your photo. On mine, the left shoe was below the clip and bottom of shoe was completly gone along with a good bit of the drum/disc which I had to replace also. The right side was like new.

Reply to
Charles Roberts

"Charles Roberts" wrote

You can get just the retainers I believe. The part number for the updated retainers is #88982879.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

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