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Parking Brake doesn't work SOMETIMES (works worse on hills/in drive)

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    #16
    Originally posted by AmuletOfNight View Post
    Okay, so take off the caliper and knock off the rotor, there should be brake shoes in there as well? And an adjuster?
    Yup. It should look like this:

    http://youtu.be/xejJ0IA3gew?t=3m21s

    I don't necessarily endorse whacking the rotor with a hammer the way they show it. But, someone else did mine, so what do I know. I had let a shop do what was supposed to be a simple brake cable fix, and they discovered the friction material had separated from one of the shoes. They had to pull the axles; but, like gadget said, it was a good excuse for changing the differential fluid, which I probably never would have bothered doing.

    BTW, when the video refers to the adjustment in the caliper, that's different than the adjuster for the shoes that gadget is talking about. AFAIK, the parking brake is basically a drum brake within the rotor, but without the hydraulics.
    Last edited by IPreferDIY; 10-21-2014, 05:46 PM.

    2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
    mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

    Comment


      #17
      I use a rubber mallet if I'm saving the rotor and it's being stubborn... or the 4# persuasion and hit the body around the lugs to get the rust to let go. I try to avoid contacting the pad surfaces if at all possible.

      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein
      rides: 93 Crown Vic LX (The Red Velvet Cake), 2000 Crown Vic base model (Sandy), 2003 Expedition (the vacation beast)
      Originally posted by gadget73
      ... and it should all work like magic and unicorns and stuff.
      Originally posted by dmccaig
      Overhead, some poor bastards are flying in airplanes.

      Comment


        #18
        Parking Brake doesn't work SOMETIMES (works worse on hills/in drive)

        Well I'll be damned. I never knew there could be a drum brake inside the rotor..I tried to tell my dad that and he just out right told me I was nuts and that there was no way it was possible. But I guess it is!

        Well looks like tomorrow I'll jack the car back up and get all the stuff off, see if I can't get it adjusted.

        Do you guys recommend lifting the car by the differential, or no? My dad about flipped at me today when he came home and saw that I had the front wheels chocked and only one wheel raised off the ground (lifted on the frame right in front of the rear right wheel), and then a supported by a jack stand. He said something about damaging the suspension or something.

        Comment


          #19
          I lift mine by the diff often. Also never paid much mind to only picking one wheel up. If you aren't leaving it that way for months it won't hurt anything.
          86 Lincoln Town Car (Galactica).
          5.0 HO, CompCams XE258,Scorpion 1.72 roller rockers, 3.55 K code rear, tow package, BHPerformance ported E7 heads, Tmoss Explorer intake, 65mm throttle body, Hedman 1 5/8" headers, 2.5" dual exhaust, ASP underdrive pulley

          91 Lincoln Mark VII LSC grandpa spec white and cranberry

          1984 Lincoln Continental TurboDiesel - rolls coal

          Originally posted by phayzer5
          I drive a Lincoln. I can't be bothered to shift like the peasants and rabble rousers

          Comment


            #20
            One benefit of raising it by the differential is that the rear control arms don't get subjected to the stresses they would if lifting by the frame. Another is that if you're putting the ass end on jack stands, you only need to do one lift. The car was obviously made to be lifted one wheel at a time since that's how the factory jack works, but I wouldn't leave it like that for long.

            Something that seems odd to me is that the back cover of the differential sticks down enough to get in the way. You don't want to be lifting by the lip of the cover, so why the heck do they make it like that?
            Last edited by IPreferDIY; 10-21-2014, 07:53 PM.

            2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
            mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

            Comment


              #21
              is your car has rear discs (lincoln), how would you adjust the rear e brakes?
              "To Find yourself, you must first lose yourself"

              -1973 Volkswagen Bus Westy
              -1986 Honda Magna 700cc
              -1989 Lincoln Town car Signature Series
              -2011 Subaru Outback

              Comment


                #22
                Slot on the back side of the backing plate.

                Pull the rotors off first and make sure the shoes are still intact and the adjuster actually adjust.
                2020 F250 - 7.3 4x4 CCSB STX 3.55's - BAKFlip MX4
                2005 Grand Marquis GS - Marauder sway bars, Marauder exhaust, KYB's
                2003 Marauder - Trilogy # 8, JLT, kooks, 2.5" exhaust, 4.10's/31 spline, widened rear's, metco's, addco's, ridetech's 415hp/381tq
                1987 Colony Park - 03+ frame swap, blown Gen II Coyote, 6R80, ridetechs, stainless works, absolute money pit. WIP

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                  #23
                  Sorry to re-hash an old thread, but:

                  I thought the adjuster for the parking brake is in the cable under the drivers side rear passenger?

                  You have to remove the friggin axle shaft to do the shoes?!?! WTF I saw a few people here that said they could get around that how exactly????
                  "To Find yourself, you must first lose yourself"

                  -1973 Volkswagen Bus Westy
                  -1986 Honda Magna 700cc
                  -1989 Lincoln Town car Signature Series
                  -2011 Subaru Outback

                  Comment


                    #24
                    The adjuster on the backing plate sets the initial position of the shoes, and will compensate for wear. Its basically a jack screw that pushes the bottom of the shoes apart.

                    If you've never looked at your axles or changed the diff oil, you're due for that if the parking brake shoes actually need to be changed. They should never actually wear out unless you drive around and use them to slow down.
                    86 Lincoln Town Car (Galactica).
                    5.0 HO, CompCams XE258,Scorpion 1.72 roller rockers, 3.55 K code rear, tow package, BHPerformance ported E7 heads, Tmoss Explorer intake, 65mm throttle body, Hedman 1 5/8" headers, 2.5" dual exhaust, ASP underdrive pulley

                    91 Lincoln Mark VII LSC grandpa spec white and cranberry

                    1984 Lincoln Continental TurboDiesel - rolls coal

                    Originally posted by phayzer5
                    I drive a Lincoln. I can't be bothered to shift like the peasants and rabble rousers

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Originally posted by gadget73 View Post
                      book procedure calls for pulling the axle. no idea how you'd get them in there without doing it. no room to work. people claim to have done it, but i cant see how.
                      I don’t know much about year-to-year variability, but on my 2000 MGM, there’s plenty of room to remove/install the parking brake stuff with the axles in place.

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                      (Yes, I cleaned the oil off the friction material on the brake shoes.)

                      The pins through the back plate on mine are round to the tip, so it’s just a matter of getting them through the brake shoe retainer clips and locking them into place. (Apparently at some point, Ford flattened the ends of the pins, and those need to be turned a quarter turn to lock them into place.) The adjuster and its spring go easy enough. The ‘big’ problem is the pivot pieces and their spring.

                      If the pivot pieces aren’t seized, it’s still easy. You can turn the top one kind of like closing scissors so that they come out despite the axle hub. For the spring, you need small needlenose vice grips and some trial and error (preferably in good lighting), but it goes. (Ford apparently changed that particular spring at some point, but its pretty much the same process.) I had the adjusters around their shortest length at this stage, though I'm not sure whether the geometry makes that necessary. The ‘big’ problem is getting the pivot pieces out if they're seized (which they probably will be if there’s a problem).

                      I ended up using Liquid Wrench and tapping the top piece back and forth until they loosened enough to close the ‘scissors’ sufficiently. It was basically a matter of using regular vice grips to clamp the bottom piece to the retainer mount underneath and, depending on direction, tapping the top piece with a hammer on the outside (where the cable connects) or with a hammer and screwdriver on the inside. Since this ends up being a one-directional process due to sliding in the other direction, the vice grips had to go from side to side. It took me a heckuva long time even after I was getting movement, but once you see movement, you should be able to get it eventually. Unfortunately, the pivot pieces were not part of the hardware kit that I had on hand (but didn’t need), so I had to clean and grease the old ones.

                      As I understand it (though feel free to correct me), the brake shoes should be adjusted so they’re at or close to the point of dragging slightly on the drum. In my case, the adjuster required an additional ~1/4" from its original length to get to that point, so I guess the a**hole at Crappy Tire who worked on it before (and charged me the axle removal price without removing the axles) didn’t set things up properly (and presumably didn’t lube the pivot pieces). This is one of the reasons that I prefer DIY.

                      The whole parking brake system is so messed up that I’ve lost all respect for Ford for putting it into production (not to mention the idiotic placement of the tops of the rear shocks that they didn’t change until 2003). Even when you get the parking brakes installed, you still have to fight with the cables to connect them. I somehow managed to figure out how to get enough slack by engaging and releasing the pedal and using a screwdriver in the cable ends to ‘push out’ enough cable. On the passenger side, I got the cable started on the lever piece and was able to push the cable back into the sheath enough by hand to get the end of the cable to sit right on the lever piece. On the driver’s side, I got the cable started on the lever piece but had to resort to using the pedal to pull the cable back in to get the end to sit right on the lever piece.

                      After all of that fuckery, there is still the need to adjust the cable connector spring contraption near the rear driver’s side wheel. As I understand it (and again feel free to correct me), you pull the clip out so it doesn’t engage the rod with the grooves, you press the pedal down, and then use the brake release. Apparently this process magically results in the rod with the grooves being in the right position for putting the clip back in. After I did this, the pedal barely moved down to engage, so I moved the clip a bit to get a small amount of pedal travel.

                      I haven’t actually tried it, since I finished way late and was in too much agony. One issue I had on the driver’s side was that after setting the adjuster on the driver's side so that I could get the drum on, it later seemed that the drum was not fully seated on the axle hub. When I was tightening down the wheel, it seemed like a crusty inner ridge was being forced over the brake shoes. Hopefully that will just wear down in due course.

                      Originally posted by gadget73 View Post
                      The adjuster on the backing plate sets the initial position of the shoes, and will compensate for wear. Its basically a jack screw that pushes the bottom of the shoes apart.

                      If you've never looked at your axles or changed the diff oil, you're due for that if the parking brake shoes actually need to be changed. They should never actually wear out unless you drive around and use them to slow down.
                      If you meant that the adjuster is the self-adjusting type, it's not. You set the initial position, and the spring keeps it from moving. As you said, the shoes shouldn't actually wear if used only for parking, so there's no need for self-adjustment. The cable adjuster is presumably for stretch in the cables.
                      Last edited by IPreferDIY; 07-07-2018, 11:32 AM.

                      2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
                      mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Does this also apply for '97-ish disc rear axles? Because that's what I got put under the Mark VI and it'd be nice to have a working parking brake sometime in the future.
                        ,
                        Slicktop '91 GS HO 4.30 rear. '82 Mark VI Tudor HO, '90 F-150 XLT, '62 project Heep, '89 Arizona Waggin' and '88 donor in PA, getting combined.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          yep, same stuff.
                          86 Lincoln Town Car (Galactica).
                          5.0 HO, CompCams XE258,Scorpion 1.72 roller rockers, 3.55 K code rear, tow package, BHPerformance ported E7 heads, Tmoss Explorer intake, 65mm throttle body, Hedman 1 5/8" headers, 2.5" dual exhaust, ASP underdrive pulley

                          91 Lincoln Mark VII LSC grandpa spec white and cranberry

                          1984 Lincoln Continental TurboDiesel - rolls coal

                          Originally posted by phayzer5
                          I drive a Lincoln. I can't be bothered to shift like the peasants and rabble rousers

                          Comment


                            #28
                            So far, so good. No obvious dragging, and by pressing the pedal hard enough, I can get the car to stay on a roughly 20-30 degree slope in neutral. Not sure yet if I'll keep using pieces of 4x4 on the sloped driveway. Considering that I rarely get the tires square with the wood, will the tires mind sitting against wood for prolonged periods?

                            2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
                            mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Originally posted by IPreferDIY View Post
                              ... As I understand it (though feel free to correct me), the brake shoes should be adjusted so they’re at or close to the point of dragging slightly on the drum. ...
                              I ended up getting a DVD with a bunch of service manuals on it. Apparently the genuine Ford ones have an expiry date that requires a BIOS clock change or some other trickery to get it to function properly, but mine doesn't, so I guess someone pieced together a bunch of them in a usuable format. Anyhoo, the 2002 manual says "Use a brake adjusting gauge to set the rear brake shoe and lining diameter to 0.5 mm (0.020 in.) less than the inside diameter of the drum portion of the brake disc."

                              Originally posted by IPreferDIY View Post
                              ... to adjust the cable connector spring contraption near the rear driver’s side wheel. As I understand it (and again feel free to correct me), you pull the clip out so it doesn’t engage the rod with the grooves, you press the pedal down, and then use the brake release. Apparently this process magically results in the rod with the grooves being in the right position for putting the clip back in. ...
                              I got that one wrong. Here's a paraphrasing of what the 2002 manual says:

                              Release the brake, pull the clip out to allow the spring to take up the slack, push the clip back in, "Apply the parking brake control with 556 N (125 lb) foot-pedal effort and release using the parking brake release handle" (but wait 20 minutes before releasing if new cables), pull the clip out to allow the spring to take up the slack, push the clip back in.

                              I'll have to re-do mine. What I've been getting is the driver's side often not wanting to release without some enouragement in the form of putting my foot on the gas (though it doesn't drag after that).

                              2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
                              mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Originally posted by IPreferDIY View Post
                                I ended up getting a DVD with a bunch of service manuals on it. ...
                                While there's no expiry date issue, I still have to leave the DVD in the drive. I would presume there's a way around that, but I'm not in a rush.

                                Originally posted by gadget73 View Post
                                book procedure calls for pulling the axle. ...
                                I should note that the 2002 service manual says nothing about pulling the axles. Here's the list of steps (with surplusage removed):

                                Removal
                                1. [after a warning about air suspension] Raise and support the vehicle.
                                2. Remove the tire and wheel assembly.
                                3. Remove the brake disc.
                                4. Remove the brake shoe adjusting screw springs.
                                5. Remove the brake shoe adjustment screw.
                                6. Remove the brake shoe hold down springs.
                                7. Remove the parking brake shoe and linings.
                                8. Inspect the components for excessive wear or damage, and install new components as required.

                                Installation
                                1. Follow the removal procedure in reverse order [with notes about lubrication, shoe adjustment, and cable adjustment].

                                2000 Grand Marquis LS HPP, a hand-me-down in 2008 with 128,000 km; 175,000 km as of July 2014
                                mods: air filter box 'tuba', headlight relay harness, J-mod (around 186,350 km), 70mm throttle body, KYB Gas-A-Just shocks, aluminum driveshaft, ARA3 PCM

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