I fixed my bellcranks this weekend. I couldn't have done it without Mike's fantastic writeup. The text was great, and the pictures were invaluable once I took everything apart, mixed up all the parts, and read in the writeup that there were different left and right assemblies.
The first drum cover popped off easily with the two 8mm bolts. On the second drum cover, I stripped out the threaded hole - or so I thought. It turns out I just stripped out the soft hardware store bolts I bought. So I went back to the store and bought two more. I added some anti-seize to the threads, sprayed more PB Blaster at the hub interface, hit the drum cover several times with a dead blow hammer, and proceeded to try again. The cover came about 2mm further off before those two bolts stripped out too. My wife was out grocery shopping at the time, so I called her and had her bring 8 more bolts back with her. This time I put some naval jelly along the hub interface where the corrosion had built up. By the time my wife came back, the naval jelly had eaten enough rust away from both sides that the cover came right off.
Disassembling the bellcranks was very straightforward with the writeup. Both pin C clips were so heavily corroded that they crumbled away. I also had a problem with one of the heavily corroded pins and really had to beat the heck out of it with a hammer and punch to get it out. I sat the bracket on a large impact socket so that the pin head was sitting in the socket opening. This gave me a good firm surface to hammer on but allowed the pin to be punched out. I found that using a finish nail hammer actually worked better with a punch than a framing hammer - it seemed to bounce less and transmitted a sharper force. I used some E-clips and stainless steel washers from the hardware store to reassemble the pivot pins.
Reassembly was interesting. I played with the star adjuster to learn how it worked. I saw how pulling the parking brake arm ratcheted the adjuster forwards. I decided to back up the adjusters (MUCH easier from inside than through the access hole!) so the drum cover easily slid on over the shoes. The drum covers weren't sliding on easily due to remaining corrosion on the hub. I realized this was probably because I was putting the cover back on in a different orientation than it came off, and so the pattern of corrosion/ridges were different. I used an impact gun and the lug nuts to gently snug the lugnuts against the cover in a round-robin pattern to pull the cover tight. I reassembled everything, put the wheels on, and dropped the truck on the ground to give it a test drive.
The first thing I noticed was the brakes were really soft. I was rolling slightly backwards down my driveway and hit the emergency brake - absolutely nothing. Repeated attempts to engage and disengage the brake resulted in absolutely nothing. I pulled the truck back in the garage, rolled under the back end, and began actuating the e-brake lever by hand on each side. (This is easier if you remove the springs so you are not working against them.) When pulling the lever back each time, I could hear the click of the star wheel ratcheting. I kept pulling the arm dozens of times until I no longer heard the click. I put the rear axle of the truck up on jackstands, but found that even when I pulled the arms all the way back, the wheels still spun.
So as others have observed on the forum, sometimes the auto-adjust mechanism does not get you far enough to have firm brake engagement. At this point I grabbed a
flathead offset screwdriver. This screwdriver is absolutely perfect for adjusting the star wheel through the access hole. Just put the blade in the hole, move the screwdriver forward towards the front of the vehicle until the screwdriver is against the front side of the access window, and pivot the blade downward. You'll get right on the teeth every time with no worries about stripping the star wheel from hitting it at a funny angle. I adjusted each side probably a good 20 more clicks until pulling the e-brake arm out about 1cm started to engage the emergency brake. At this point, I put the springs and rubber plugs back, dropped the truck on the ground, and tested the e-brake. Perfect!
Now that I know what to do, I will include parking brake adjustment with the offset screwdriver as a part of routine maintenance.
Mike, thanks again!
- Chris
Sticking Parking Brake Bellcranks
Linear Mode
