Well now I'll hafta go look... I was pretty sure, but I might be havin' another Senior Moment...

 

just throwing it out there but does the shape and wear on the contact points of the shoes from left to right look the same? Could it be the shoes?

 

shoes are new out of the box.had one side heat up and ruined them.
lifetime warrantied though so that was good.but anyway,nope its not the shoes.

 

man this is getting old now.
im beginning to think this e-brake setup is just junk from the factory.
i figured out my problem on the drivers side.i put a screw driver on top of the wheel cylinder and pried down.apparently the backing plate was bent.this explained why that part was hitting it.
so now both levers fully work and push the shoes outward.
however it just doesn't seem to be enough to work worth a darn.
the cables fully pull them back and the only way i can get the brake to pretend to hold sub par,is to over tighten the shoes so the wheels can hardly turn to start with,which of course sucks.
it MAY get me by for an inspection,but it certainly wont be worth anything at all once i come home and loosen them up a bit so my brakes don't catch on fire going down the road lol.
man what a hassle trying to fix a poor setup that i doubt worked much better from the factory.
even with the shoes over tightened and dragging right now,it would be worthless in the event of a hydraulic brake failure.
im so frustrated and sick of pulling tires.

any suggestions as to what to rig up to make an actual working emergency brake,that would pass inspections with flying colors and actually stop the truck if i lost my brakes? i pretty much lost all faith in this stock trash setup.
a pickup dually axle w/ disc brake conversion (with working e-brake calipers) is likely what i need here.dang it though,all that will run upward of another grand.

 

That sucks to hear, the frusturation gets overwhelming sometimes...
On a good note, it's nice to hear you found a bent backing plate.

As for helping in an emergency, I think our trucks are a bit too heavy. I "kinda" had working e-brakes with all brand new parts on my first truck. But, when a hydraulic brake line did blow out, the E-brake pedal went straight to the floor when i hit that. Friggin cable snapped
That was an interesting ride thru the 4-way intersection....

In the thread Sterling Disc Brakes, Tecgod and I were discussing driveline parking brakes as a way to get a parking brake without using calipers with parking brake cable provisions. The setup I have on my '65 is mounted on the output shaft on my NP435 4 speed. And that thing WORKS!!!
To pass yearly inspection here in MA, the parking brake must hold the vehicle from moving in gear. With 4.10's in the rear end, and putting the thing in granny gear (6.69:1 ). That brake stalls my 352 FE!! I've never even opened it up either.



It's operated by the hand lever to the far right in this picture.


My next step for this 85 is to make a driveline brake from an F-Superduty ZF5 fit the back of my T19. No idea if it'll work, but it's a shot!

Something along those lines might be in your future?

http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/reviews/parking_brake/

http://highangledriveline.com/e_brake.html

Not gonna be a bolt-in, but maybe it could be modified?

 

Are they not holding the truck from going forward? They wont hold much in reverse.

 

take your pick lol.

 

Maybe a set of Superduty axles? It's an extreme suggestion...but I thought I would just toss it out there....
That would get you upgraded to a Dana 60 dually front at the same time...in order to match the rear.
Unfortunately, that means all the money you spent on the dually adapters and dually wheels would be lost. Well not all of it, some could be re-cooperated after selling them.

Extreme suggestion for an e-brake though...kinda just thinking out loud...

 

fordmann.com | F-350: Sterling Rear Disc Conversion put super duty / e series drum / disks in. Someone also is going to have a new hub to run 16 x 8.5 wheels on super duty axles. I'll try to find the post on it.



*edit*

here is the link http://powerstrokenation.com/forums/...ad.php?t=78440

 

Well with Superduty axles, you could also get those sweeeeet 5-spoke dually wheels on the Lariat model F350's

Sounds expeeeeeensive!!

 

I went to search for this old thread and give it to someone in the forums and to my surprise, I didn't update with what I found! Sorry to anyone to whoever searched this thread and saw a dead end! My bad! I did find out what the problem was and I made a post to someone else, but this was the problem:


I know it's an old thread now, but that must suck to search and find this and not see the resolve. So in case anyone else can't figure it out, get that 3lb out and spread those bars back open!

It must have taken me like another month of head scratching or something and by that time, I must have forgotten to reply back here. I know I fixed this not all that much longer from when I started in on it. Just long enough to forget to post back I guess. It had me fooled for bit but after going through it all, I knew these bars must had bent. So if you stepped on your e-brake too hard or a previous owner did......Suspect the bars got bent too.

Oh, I noticed I was onto it in post 1, now that I look back, but I realized there was nothing else there could be. With a helper stepping on the e-brake, and seeing the cable move all it could, there was nothing else to do but smack some more curve out that bar too. It's the only thing left when all else is new, to not give you enough throw. That's all there is to it. So smack some more curve out of until it spreads the shoes apart against the drum. What's tough is, you don't have a new one to see what's supposed to look like, so it's just smack, and try, smack and try until enough bend it out of it, to where it spreads the shoes. There's really nothing else it can be, once you know everything else is in top shape.



I would then latter ditch this axle w/ dually adapters and bolt in a true DRW pickup axle. Never had any issues with this one that I remember.......but it's the same system. Could happen just as easily. This is the fix and I remember it wasn't easy to get some bend back out of those. I really had to wail on 'em! I might have even resorted to grabbing the maul to pound the bend out of that stubborn side, wouldn't surprise me. You have to take them right off the truck of course and set them on something solid and whack them harder than you'd think you'd ever have too but they will straighten back open a bit, believe it or not.

 

FORDF250HDXLT thanks for coming back and updating us all. I had a similar issue with the brakes the on my 93. I ended up digging into it hard last summer after I got tired of it barely doing anything on flat ground, and not worth a damn on any incline. I didn't have an issue with the lever, looked nice and straight. What I did find though, was the cheap brake shoes I used last time I changed them had worn down at the top where the lever actuates. Don't think I ever got a picture, but while playing around with the drum off I noticed that only one shoe was barely moving if the ebrake was on/lever was pulled. I pulled them off and built up some weld in the area to bring it back to what stock was supposed to look like. Parking brake works mint now! Wish I had done that 2 years earlier when the problem started.