Was at my g/f'* house the other night and went to set the parking brake, only to have the pedal go to the floor and not catch at all.

Uh-oh.

(Her driveway is an incline and I'd rather the trans was not solely responsible for holding the car in place)

And then it occurred to me after reading a few threads here... Dumb@$$ your drums need adjusting. So I took care of that today- the driver side drum came off with NO resistance and the pass side was not much better. It took just about a FULL TURN of the starwheel and then some to bring them to spec- I thought you only needed it to "click" a few times- and at 143K I'd say the shoes are maybe half-worn. Lots of meat left. While I was in there I hosed everything down with Brakleen and took a little 600 grit to the inside of the drums to clean 'em up.


The regular brake pedal catches sooner now, and the parking brake pedal no longer needs to go to the floor to catch (and it has resistance now!)- mission accomplished- but the pedal is still a tad spongy. Next up, a good bleeding. Today'* mission was a success!

yeah but if there old and rusty and cluged with dirt and brake dust the self adjusters stop working .

Steve-O- try backing up at like 10-15mph and hit the brake prety hard a few times.

after that they pettle should get a little better.

the self adjusters suck balls, and barely work at all

what toastedoats said about the adjusters is what I always understood to be true about them... 'course, I could be wrong.

I took it apart mostly just to see what I had- it never hurts to know what you're dealing with, being that the car'* almost 10 years old and whatnot.

agreed, you NEED to Manuslly adjust, at each tire rotation

can someone (with pictures and words) explain the process of adjusting drums.

Adjusting the rear brakes is fine, you normally adjust them with the dums in place though, with a brake spoon. I hope I didn't misunderstand. Also, there is a (stand alone) parking brake adjustment that you can do.

you have to remove the drum
then look between the 2 shoes on each side
right in the middle between them there is a small wheel that has several notches
you want to turn the wheel up to expand the shoes
put the trum back on and give it a spin
the rear drums are adjusted properly when there is some drag on the drums
you may have to take off the drums several times to get the correct adjustment