The_Josh_Bear
Full Access Member
So at some point a few years ago I switched to 33" tires, which are larger of course and make a longer "lever" for the brakes to slow down. I switched to thicker mud/snow tires and they are also a heavier rotating mass. All put together, my braking wasn't great to start, and after the upgrades it was worse.
We know that all things being equal, the rear auto-adjusters on these rigs is prone to sucking. So we have to stay on top of that by manually adjusting them or making sure they work and jamming the brakes in reverse.
That said, I found another major failure point that might not seem obvious! Like, I'm really annoyed that I didn't know this!
The parking brake pedal adjustment is critical to the rear brakes working. Not just a little bit, it's what "pre-loads" the shoes so the brake cylinder doesn't have to go very far to get some shoe contact and begin the braking process. As an example if you could push your parking brake pedal to the floor(but didn't cause you're driving), that braking system has to take up a lot of slack before the shoes are making contact. And Ford in their infinite wisdom designed the front brakes to operate based on pressure from the rear brakes. That to me is INSANE, but it's what they(and pretty much every OE) did. If it was me the rears and fronts should both be closed systems that have nothing to do with each other.
But wait, that's not the thing I found out! I found out recently that you can have working parking brake cables that are so stiff that they make the drums very very slow to react to pedal inputs and it creates the same problem. Mash the brake pedal and the truck just kind of looks at you for a half-second then finally starts braking. This was a revelation to me recently and I'm so enjoying brakes that ACTUALLY WORK!
In my case I had replaced one cable and was having issues so I replaced the other cable finally and BAM, it was like braking with a whole new vehicle.
The fact that they are less than $20 each is great, too. Just takes a little patience and a lot of random tools to change the dumb things.
I was reading about someone's disc brake rears and thinking, "Man I love my (drum) brakes now, haven't thought that ever in over 16 years..."
Just wanted to share to hopefully help out others like myself that always hated these drums. Now I have the opposite problem that I need to make sure not to lock up the rears!
TL;DR
Assuming the rest of your braking system is in good shape:
The parking brake pedal adjustment is critical to the rear brakes working in a safe fashion.
You can have *working* parking brake cables that are so stiff that they make the drums very very slow to react to pedal inputs and it creates the same problem.
New cables are less than $20/ea.
We know that all things being equal, the rear auto-adjusters on these rigs is prone to sucking. So we have to stay on top of that by manually adjusting them or making sure they work and jamming the brakes in reverse.
That said, I found another major failure point that might not seem obvious! Like, I'm really annoyed that I didn't know this!
The parking brake pedal adjustment is critical to the rear brakes working. Not just a little bit, it's what "pre-loads" the shoes so the brake cylinder doesn't have to go very far to get some shoe contact and begin the braking process. As an example if you could push your parking brake pedal to the floor(but didn't cause you're driving), that braking system has to take up a lot of slack before the shoes are making contact. And Ford in their infinite wisdom designed the front brakes to operate based on pressure from the rear brakes. That to me is INSANE, but it's what they(and pretty much every OE) did. If it was me the rears and fronts should both be closed systems that have nothing to do with each other.
But wait, that's not the thing I found out! I found out recently that you can have working parking brake cables that are so stiff that they make the drums very very slow to react to pedal inputs and it creates the same problem. Mash the brake pedal and the truck just kind of looks at you for a half-second then finally starts braking. This was a revelation to me recently and I'm so enjoying brakes that ACTUALLY WORK!
In my case I had replaced one cable and was having issues so I replaced the other cable finally and BAM, it was like braking with a whole new vehicle.
The fact that they are less than $20 each is great, too. Just takes a little patience and a lot of random tools to change the dumb things.
I was reading about someone's disc brake rears and thinking, "Man I love my (drum) brakes now, haven't thought that ever in over 16 years..."
Just wanted to share to hopefully help out others like myself that always hated these drums. Now I have the opposite problem that I need to make sure not to lock up the rears!
TL;DR
Assuming the rest of your braking system is in good shape:
The parking brake pedal adjustment is critical to the rear brakes working in a safe fashion.
You can have *working* parking brake cables that are so stiff that they make the drums very very slow to react to pedal inputs and it creates the same problem.
New cables are less than $20/ea.