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Maintenance, Mods, & Tips Mods | Tips | Repairs & Troubleshooting

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Unread 10-30-2013, 08:18 PM   #1
Rich Z
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Crawfordville, FL
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Name : Rich Zuchowski
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Default Parking brake tip

Anytime any of you guys get your brakes worked on, try to remember to ask them to adjust your parking brake for you at that time. The only way you can do the adjustment of the parking brake pad to drum clearance is with the rotors removed. They aren't like in the old days when there was a slot in back of the drum and you could do the adjustment without removing anything. So it's a relative pain to do this real minor adjustment if you find that your parking brake just isn't holding your car when you use it on an incline.

The reason I decided to do that today is because weekend before last I had parked on a decline and when I was getting ready to leave, I pushed in the clutch (I usually leave it in gear while parked) the car started drifting towards the guard rail. I had to REALLY crank upwards on the parking brake lever to get it to hold for me. I'm embarrassed to admit that I probably caused some of it myself, because a while back I had driven for a short spell with the parking brake still engaged. Unfortunately the little idiot light didn't catch this idiot's attention because it was blocked from view by my steering wheel. The C5s don't have an idiot audible tone like the C6s do. Evidently it must have been borderline anyway, as there was still lots of pad on the parking brake, so at least I didn't have to replace them. It just was not engaging tight enough to hold the car. And from what I have read while researching how to do this, apparently a lot of cars have their parking brake "adjusted" during manufacturing where it is not optimal and might not hold on a steep incline.

In case you are interested, the "seat of the pants" way to adjust the parking brake pads is to remove the rotors, then spin that adjustment dial for the pads to widen them to where you can no longer put the rotor back on. Then back it off just to the point where the rotor will now slide back onto the hub, and that is it. It only takes about an hour if you have a lift, going real slow at it, but if you already have the rotors off for a brake job, heck, that's the time to adjust them.

Oh yeah, there was some discussion I read about replacing the bolts (21mm sized socket) that hold the caliper brackets to the spindles. The GM manual says that you MUST use new ones each time. Apparently this is because the new ones have a red streak of sealant on the threads and they need be sealed when tightened. So if you just clean up the threads (male and female) and use Permatex blue, those bolts ARE reusable. Thread is 14mmx2.0. Torque them to 125 ft/lbs with Permatex when putting them back in.

Anyway, I'll take the car out for a drive over the next few days and see if I can find a good place to test that parking brake out for holding power. I haven't put the wheels back on yet because I want to do some cleanup in the wheel wells while the wheels are off, and figure I can do that tomorrow. Heck, I'm retired! I don't HAVE to do everything all at once.
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