Drum Brake Star Adjuster Lever (revisited)

Took my drums off and replaced all the rear wheel studs today. Just to follow up, my 2004 brake adjust levers are inboard on both sides. Everything works normally. There must be variation year to year, model to model.

Glad you solved your problem.

 

Since you have a RCLB, maybe it's after 2004 the drum brakes changed design, regardless of RC, AC, or DC.

 

2004 is such a weird model year, especially the DC. I didn't know I was buying a half-Sequoia, 25% early 1st gen, 25% late 1st gen. Christ, finding the right parts is intensely annoying.

 

this is why I’ll be shopping for an early gen like I had. Suicide doors with low bed walls...

 

Which part is half-Sequoia?

 

The front half of the body and the electrical stuff contained within it. I'm definitely exaggerating but not by too much.

 

So after my fiance drove the truck about 2.5 hours in stop and go traffic for Thanksgiving the brake pedal felt a little funny. There seemed to be more travel than usual. And of course the parking brake still wasn't working. But I took it for about a 2 hour round trip drive the next day and started working the parking brake pedal to see if it might adjust the rear brake shoes and so improve brake feel.

Lo and behold the brake feel started improving and the parking brake started to grab. I can actually stop the truck with it now. Pretty jazzed that I don't have to take the wheels off and mess with stuff again. So my advice is: if you've done the labor and your brake isn't working, have someone treat the brakes as an on/off switch for a while and it might bring the system back to life!

 

I just engage/disengage the parking brake at the stop light occasionally while I'm waiting to make sure things are in order. Either that or I'll end up sanding rust out of the frozen bell cranks later that year.

 

You don't even have to be driving for it to work. If everything is assembled and moving correctly, get any slack out of the cable, then just pump the parking pedal koeo in the garage while reading a book, surfing the web, drinking a beer, whatever.

 

I did do that several hundred times over a few weeks after the brake job. I think the whole mechanism needed some hard use and wear to come to life. First the brake pedal felt weird, which I thought might be the shoes having worn down a bit in the rear, then (by engaging and disengaging the parking brake ANOTHER couple dozen times) the parking brake actually started to hold.

 

Oh man I’m about to open up the back and check my shoes and mayve replace some worn looking items hopefully I don’t run into this

 

@HAL69000 did you end up keeping the NAPA kit parts or did you revert back to OEM like I did?

 

I ended up not touching it and just doing the parking brake press and disengage dance hundreds of times at red lights. I'm 100% NAPA, though I did find my old star adjusters and am holding on to them just in case. I've got a couple of more pressing issues to address on the truck (thread forthcoming, lol) after which I might check on the mechanism to see if it is clicking correctly.

I think what happened is that the passenger side was way out of adjustment and my parking brake engagement needed to move the star ratchet on that side a whole lot before it started to do anything on the driver's side. Or maybe I just have one wheel engaging properly and the other not. Dunno yet to be honest.

 

often overlooked is the pb equilizer arm on the back of the rear diff. it should pivot

many times its locked up from rust so when you engage the pb the cable only allows the pass side the lock/pull. the bushings wears out to and need replaced.

the cable going to the driver crank stays loose and never self adjusts in that poor condition leading to scratching heads

 

Managed to loosen that baby up when I was working on the whole system. It sure wasn't moving until I took the whole thing apart.

 

Just wanted to add this in here for those questioning aftermarket parts. I used this carquest part from Advanded Autoparts on my 04 Tundra DC to fix the star adjuster. At the least I can confirm that this part fits, the metal flange sits on the star wheel correctly/seems robust enough.