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Just did a complete replacement of my parking brake shoes. I think I've got the very beginnings of a rear seal leak on the rear passenger side, but that isn't what prompted me to check my parking brake pads. They weren't holding very well, so when I did an inspection I found the bottom shoe on the passenger side had begun to separate from the metal frame. Rather than being wet from axle grease, the shoe was actually rusted looking.
The job really wasn't that big of a deal and can be done with limited tools and experience. The one really hard thing to do is to get the heavy retainer spring off and on. I found an easy way to do it using a old screwdriver ground down into a punch. Just slip the end of the punch under the end of the spring and use the side of the shoe to leverage the spring back into the hole. Works really easy.
The question I have is how to get the pedal adjusted to where I have solid braking pressure on the rotors? When I got finished installing the shoes, I adjusted the star wheel until the shoes would barely fit back into the rotor. The only other adjustment I know of is the 10 mm screw on the pedal, but given how slack the park brake pedal is right now, I would have to run the screw way down to get any pressure at all. Is there something I missed or do I need to run the star wheel up some more?
