Looking for some advice on changing the brake shoes on a 2003 E350 Super Duty. I was able to get the disc brake caliber off, the housing for the caliber off, and even the combined disc/drum came off easy. So the question is do I try to change the shoes with the axle hub still on or do I have to remove it? My axle hub does not look like the others I have seen on-line or in videos--no ring of bolts to get to the bearing. So is there a special tool that will fit around those 2 triangular shapes so I can remove the axle hub? Any advice from the wise ones here would be greatly appreciated.



2003 E350 parking brake shoes

 

 

Thanks for your reply Im50fast. I thought they looked good too. Only got the E350 in Dec. '17 and it has not had any parking brakes in that time. I see I will need to research this more--I read a number of others with no or weak parking brakes. I got new rotors--the disc was too worn. I'll check on the rest of the parking brake 'stuff' next.

 

 

Yes, the parking brakes don't work at all. The regular disc brakes work fine. This van spent most of it's life as a wheelchair van for the state of TN; very little rust for an '03 with 140k miles (see photo). I think I will start at the parking brake pedal and work my way back to the shoes. Also, when I bought the van the only code (see photo) was a problem with the brake light on the instrument panel--which led me to believe it had been driven with the parking brake on. Now I need to investigate this too to see how it all fits together.



Rear brake driver side

 

 

Future plans include trips to PNW, Canada, etc with a lot of boondocking in mountainous areas. Probably also habit--I have always used my parking brakes.

 

 

I have looked at this axle and done some research. To remove this axle and wheel flange will be more work than I want to do right now. I checked the parking brake and it does move (slightly) when the pedal is pushed, so I will try to adjust the brake shoes/star nut to see if that will fix the problem. What is really strange is that most E350 van brake photos I can find have very different ends--usually the end has a number of bolts holding the end of the axle in place--you remove the end and can get to the bearings. I think I would either need to get into the diff. and remove a retaining clip or else remove the large bolts behind the parking brake backer plate and remove the entire thing. I will update about I adjust the brakes, hopefully this weekend.

 

Update on the parking brakes. I have worked on both rear brakes. The disc rotors were worn past spec. so I replaced both. I cleaned the parking brakes and adjusted them so that they 'somewhat' work--will hold on flat or slight incline but not on steeper hills. The cables are not adjustable so I am looking into seeing whether the cables have stretched--the parking brake pedal depresses to the firewall. As far as the parking brakes themselves, they do not appear to be self-adjusting--I saw no lever to turn the star-bolt; since these are only parking/emergency brakes it makes sense that they would be manually adjusted.

 

I grew up in south Florida and never used a parking brake either, except to do 180's. I also have no parking brakes even though I've replaced the rotors and shoes. I think they need to be adjusted. Now that I live in Tennessee, I've parked on some steep driveways where I've worried about only my park prawl keeping my almost 8,000 lb van from rolling down the hill.