Hi all,
a while back (1.5yrs) the rear parking brake hardware on my 97 Mountaineer (5.0 AWD) was replaced as it had been corroded beyond repair. A few months later I noted that the brake only really held the vehicle from rolling backward and has no effect forward. The shop readjusted it and it seemed to work better (still held better in a backward direction). Now I am not passing state inspection due to this... it just does not hold forward and hold very well backward. Was something done wrong? Is this something I can easily adjust myself. I really do not want to pay again to get this fixed.

I also am in the habit of setting the parking brake when I leave the truck (as I drove a standard all my life before this it is just habit)... that should not hurt should it?

 

First things first, the parking brake is supposed to be "self adjusting" but I told that to my '98 explorer and it did not listen. Instead I found in my manual that there are rubber grommets on the inside of each of your rear wheel brake dust shields.. There is one per wheel and they are slightly behind the axle and down a little, maybe an inch wide. When you take these out use a flashlight to see if you can see a small sprocket inside the brake shield.
Using a slotted screw driver you can rotate this sprocket and if I remember correctly(but not positive) you would try to make the sprocket rotate toward the ground on the passenger side and upward on the driver side. Either way as far as I am concerned you can easily do it but it will require some guess and check and a little time until it is tight enough to hold the car but not so tight as to wear down too quickly.
Here in Texas the rule is that the brake should hold the car while the gear lever is in both drive and reverse without any gas being applied. As for hurting your parking brake.. repetitive use on anything will inherently wear it down however, everytime you put and leave your car in park without the brake you wear down parts inside your transmission. So better to wear down the parking brake than your tranny...

 

Carfreak113, thanks for the info...

So... adding to this thread. My co-worker, who has a 96 Exp v8 AWD, just failed his inspection for the same thing. Ford wants almost 1,000 bucks to replace all the hardware on the rear brakes to make it work. Same issue, it holds fine in reverse but does not hold going forward. The bitch here is that another shop had fixed this for him a year ago. He took it back there and they are now trying to figure out why it only works when you go backwards and not forwards. They are in the process of replacing some component that they did not the last time they serviced the parking brake. If that fixes his problem I will post what they replaced once he gets it back from the shop.

This is starting to sound to me like a design flaw and not an adjustment issue!

 

Excuse me, but $1000 for a rear Brake Job?

I can't post here what I really want to say about that.

Back when I was a Mechanic (it's been a LONG time - 70's), EVERY rear brake job we did included:

1. New shoes (duh).
2. Drum resurface.
3. ALL hardware replaced (hey, it's like $10).
4. Wheel Cylinders rebuilt or replaced.
5. Full system Bleed.
6. Everything adjusted and lubricated.
7. Road test.

The cost? $89. The only extra was for rear-end seals or new drums.

I know there's this thing called inflation, but drum brakes haven't really changed much from the 70's and I can't even calculate what kind of inflation rates would be needed to get an $89 brake job to cost $1000 25 years later.

-Larry

 

Larry, I completely agree... 1000 bucks to fix the parking brake just seems ludicrous to me.

Apparently the other shop replaced some components they had changed in the past and it did not help. They then replaced the "ratchets" for a cost of 150 bucks and that seems to have done the trick. I am guessing that these are actually the adjusters that they replaced. I am also going to bet money that in a year's time when he needs a new inspection it will have the same problem again!

 

I have a 98 exp 4wd, 5.0. My rear wheels were getting hot and traced it to a failure to fully release the parking brakes on both sides. I was on a trip and couldn't go back home, and could not fix the problem right then, so I took out all of the P-brake components (shoes, springs, retainers, adjuster, & 2 lever peices.) to finish the trip.

I have since determined that the left rear p-brake cable was binding and, although it was moving and retracting, some load was left on the brakes.

So now it is time to renstall all of the peices (+ new shoes).

One problem though. I can't figure out how to put them back together. I can put all of the peices together on the bench, but I don't know how to get them between the torque plate (where wheel lungs are mounted) and the back plate (caliper support plate???). It was hell getting the shoes etc off whle working in this tigh space, but I dit it. I know I can't put it back together the same way. (esp springs)

All of the pictures in my Haynes repair manual show either the rear drum version, where everthing is accessible around the torque plate or what looks close to my configuration, but the torque plate is not there.
Do I need to remove the torque plate? If so, how? If not is there something else missing?

 

IIRC, the '97 has disks all round and that separate rear drum for the parking brake only.
I just replaced mine a couple weeks ago. The manual tells you to pull the hubs off but you can get away without it.... Now tell me I should RTFM first :-)