2005 Silverado: Rear Drum Brakes ?

parking brakes are essential if parked on a hill with an automatic or the parking pawl will bind up. People have had to have a tow truck take the strain off their tranny so they could get it out of Park in the hills of San Francisco. And some people have manual transmissions!

Funny, those people aren't me. That's fer damn sure!

I've had my truck up hill where my receiver was scraping on the ground. No problems. I have a friend where my designated parking spot is about a 40deg hill. No problems.

Guess it's just me.

GMC Greml>

As far as I know, they don't make them for the S-10 trucks. We don't seem to see any problems with them. If I remember, I'll check and see if the manufacturer makes a version for the S-trucks. These items are not made by GM, but by an aftermarket place. GM does approve them. GM does make their own version of caliper shields, but the price is about 10 times as high, and they don't appear to be as large or robust.

Ian

It's not really a good idea to put a huge load on your parking pawl... If I ever have to park on a steep hill, I set the parking brake. I also set it when I'm on the boat launch putting the boat in or taking it out.

I'm a member of APCAT (Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Automatic Transmissions). ;-)

-Tony

The last GM tranny I pulled apart (all be it a transaxle) had a BAND - not pin of any sort - the way it should be. If ANYTHING it should be a BAND and THEN a pawl, incase the band fails for some reason. Other than that - just like drum brakes - emergency brakes have no point in modern society.

GMC Gremlin

Hi!

Au contraire...the e-brake was the difference between getting stopped and explaining to my neighbor what I could have done to his truck when my old Sierra decided not to stop in reverse.

I'm glad I fixed mine...it came in very handy that day.

'84 Sierra, 6.2, 4-speed automatic...questionable power brakes!

William The Guesser

and what about those of us that prefer a manual trans? are we not modern?

so what are you going to do when your main brakes fail? just throw the trans into park??

Now, on the other hand. If you were going even 20MPH an "emergency" brake would probably get you down to say... 15MPH in any appreciable distance. As it does in both my Jimmy and in my mother's '99 Malibu. I USED to drive my '85 K5 around with just the e-brake, until I fixed my brakes (my suggestion).

GMC Gremlin

Dearest Trey,

I had made this exception in a previous post. I thought this post had been narrowed down to but a few who would remember my context, welcome to the fun. A park should simply be put into manual transmissions. There is no reason the fork couldn't engage 1st gear into an immovable gear cast into the case or whatever.

Design your braking system so in most instances of failure you have at least a front and a rear, or both fronts and a rear. The proportioning valve in my '90 GMC Jimmy separates the front/rear of the truck. IIRC the '91 Skylark I just sold separated the P/S front & D/S rear, and vice versa. This system (skylark) gives you roughly 50% braking power. The truck (a worse design IMHO) give you variable stopping power. If the rears went, it would stop pretty well. If the front went, it would stop not-much-better than a parking brake (drum brakes are AWESOME!!! lol). But in either event this allows the braking mechanism to be used entirely as they were meant, in a hydraulic fashion with all braking surfaces applicable in use (not just one pad).

And as for thinking you can stop ANY vehicle with an "emergency" brake (which, BTW, GM calls a PARKING BRAKE) is sheer lunacy. You'll only "knock off" a few MPH and you might as well just crash straight into them and enjoy the carnage.

And as for what I would do if I was dictator: I understand the desire for redundancy in the braking system, since it's a big safety thing. My take is make STAINLESS steel lines, and have two braking systems INDEPENDENT of each other. With stainless lines, unless you drive around in salt water they should never rot out. The only reason that they *should* fail is because of blunt-force trauma, and if you designed it correctly, one system getting damaged should put the other "far away" so it wont take them both out at once. IE the only place that lines of the two systems should come close to each other is at the wheels and at the booster (though not the master cylinder, two of those)

GMC Gremlin A guy who has practiced stopping cars & trucks with "parking brakes" and wouldn't bother to try in the event of an "emergency".

Unless there's somthing wrong with the rear brakes or they are not properly adjusted, the parking brake can stop a vehicle just fine. Most I've seen can lock the rear wheels up totally (not a good idea if you're using it to stop).

-Tony

You must drive go carts. Rear wheels might have 20% of the braking power, and parking brakes have probably less than 1/2 of that, but no more than

1/2.

GMC Gremlin

My truck is not moving if I have the e-brake on. Yes, the rear brakes have

20% or less of the truck's total st> You must drive go carts. Rear wheels might have 20% of the braking

Ian, did you get a chance to check on these? I know the S-10s with rear discs have issues with caliper slides freezing up on the passenger side rear tire. Just want to head off problems before they start...

Unless Chevy changed, it only presses ONE shoe into the drum, so it could only have 1/2 of that 20%. So it doesn't get better than 90% of your original breaking power.

GMC Gremlin

The GM parking brakes have ALL used both the leading and trailing shoes for the E-Brake. Ever notice that the E-Brake lever goes between the adjuster and the shoe? With the way they are set up a properly adjusted drum brake will stop a vehicle faster and with less pedal force than disc brakes of comparable size. WHY? Discs do not have any provision to use the motion of the vehicle to increase the stopping power of the brakes, they depend entirely on the hydraulic pressure behind the pistons.

Then what warps the drums?

GMC Gremlin

Setting the parking brake hard after a long downhill run to the lake towing a 3000lb sailboat. Ask me how I know..... JR

Being stupid and overheating them then putting the E-Brake on without letting them cool usually does it.

In the entire time I have owned or repaired vehicles (from motorcycles through class 8 trucks) I have NEVER had a warped drum that was not caused through operator error and even then there were only a very few. Now rotors on the other hand, how many would you like, I scrapped about

50 a week because of warping and cracking, plus the lovely rust delamination that some cheap rotors were known for. There are only two real reasons why disc brakes were developed. One was to reduce brake fade on race cars due to heat build up inside the drums, the other was to reduce unsprung weight and rotating mass on the axles. Most auto manufacturers used them because they are cheaper to manufacture and service than a drum brake system.

Well I never was good in math with all these percentages, but I know I could lock the rear wheels up in any of the vehicles I've ever had with an emergency brake... percentage of braking ability doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

I think there must be somthing wrong with YOUR emergency brake.

And no... both shoes are used in GM emergency brakes.

-Tony