FireballXL5

These stars don't click, there's no 'self adjuster' like other cars...

BobbyT454

I'm also having some e brake rebuild issues. After assembling the e brake components the shoe facing the front of the car is bulging out from behind the spindle and the shoe facing the rear of the car is recessed in. When driving there is definitely contact being made and after taking the rotor off there is wear on the pad lining of the shoe, particularly at the lip where the lining meets the frame of the shoe. Is this an adjustment problem or did I not properly install all the components. The friend I'm doing the job with says the shoes will align themselves once the rotor is installed, but that seems like it would just cause friction against the shoe that is bulging out from behind the spindle. Also, are the brake shoes side specific? Does one set have to go on the drivers side, and another set on the passenger side?
Thanks for the help!
Bob

FireballXL5

Like most typical brake shoes I would assume they could be moved/adjusted around... Think the only thing holding them on is the little pin clip from behind ... Make sure everything is attached properly... So the star wheel can spread both shoes not just the leading edge shoe...

The star sets the gap at the bottom , the e brake cable pulls the gap at the top... Methinks you got some more fiddling to do... ;-)

And the greatest tip I've heard yet, which I still need to do myself, is pull the half shaft off the rear rotor side when adjusting the star wheel for correct spacing of the bottom of the shoe before fully adjusting the top...

If you're getting uneven wear at the bottom of the shoe only, I would attribute that to having the bottom star wheel too far adjusted out...

Btw, the rear calipers have springs in the piston for the disc brakes, so they're constantly providing 'Some' drag/contact while cruising down the road...

BobbyT454

Thanks for the help!
Turns out I couldn't have possibly had the e-brake components assembled worse. I took it all apart and put it back together and everything looks good. I would like to replace the piece of brake line that connects to the rear caliper and runs along the rear trailing arm (passenger side). The nut on top of the fitting that threads into the caliper is buttered pretty bad and I think I'll have a tough time connecting/disconnecting it in the future. I have it loose from the caliper but not from the rubber hose. Any tips on loosening that up? I'm hesitant to use a torch on it because I don't want to collapse the rubber hose, and when I attempt to vice grips the entire line moves, and I'm afraid of damaging the lining of the hose it connects to if I jostle it too much. For now I hit with PB Blaster and I'm letting it sit. I was thinking about using a small amount of heat further down the line towards the caliper, close enough that it transfers through the metal but far enough away as to not damage the rubber hose. Does this seem plausible? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks again!
Bob

FireballXL5

Buy a new form fitted brake line... Think they're like $15-18... Then cut your existing one in half... Get a proper vice grip with clean strong grip teeth, and spin those bad ones outta there! Much easier to handle when you aren't messing with a assembled line... That's what I did during trailing arm R&R

BobbyT454

Thanks for the help! I bought a new line and new hose and replaced both. The parking brakes are installed and I just set the adjustment as listed in the shop manual (loosen the nuts, tighten at each adjustment start the the wheels until the wheel can't be turned, back off 6-8 clicks, tighten the nuts until it takes an 80 lb pull to move from the 13th to the 14th click on the handle, then tighten the nuts to 60 inch lbs). It's hard to tell exactly what the torque is since i don't have an open ended torque wrench. Currently it's holding on a slight decline on the 15th click of the handle. Is this ok? Should it be engaging sooner?
Thanks again for all the help!
Bob

FireballXL5

The 13th click is where it should be set when doing your adjustment... So that at zero clicks it won't be dragging.. So a 15th click hold is very reasonable!

BobbyT454

Awesome! Thank you again for you help.
On a completely unrelated topic, after I adjusted the parking brake I took her out for a spin. Two things I noticed that were not normal:
1. The engine is not warming up all the way, based on the temp gauge. It moves, but just slightly. It did not reach normal operating temperature at all, and usually it warms up quickly and stays there (I put a new sensor in her last year, but I'm thinking if the sensor was bad it wouldn't be reading at all).
2. She ran like crap. Almost like she was missing. No guts in the low end and it required a lot of r's to get her moving from a stop. This is not typical. Being a big block low end power is usually never an issue.
Could these both be symptoms of a faulty thermostat? If the thermostat failed open, would the engine not warm up fully, and could that throw off the running of the car?

I'll add that over the past couple years I've been tuning her up. I did it to all set to specs using the factory manual, setting the timing, the idle mixture on the carb (using a vacuum meter), the idle, gapped the plugs, new points (gapped) and new condensor. When all this was over I attempted to set the fast idle. To do so the manual said to disconnect the wire lead from transmission control solenoid under the air cleaner. I broke the wire off in the process (I never quite got the fast idle set exactly) but I took it apart, re-soldered the wire and reattached it and she ran fine after that.
Is there any chance that if that TC-solenoid is malfunctioning it could cause this to happen? She definitely ran poorly while the wire was broken off.

Thank you again!
Bob

FireballXL5

If you replaced the temperature sending unit on the car from the original... It's very likely that the new unit is not sending the same ohms readings as the original... It's a big problem that has been discussed many times... The gauge won't be accurate.

There's many write ups on the subject.. Wilcox corvette is your friend for looking for that info...

As far as tuning.... It's hard to say what all has been changed, how 'stock' or aftermarket your setup is, and what changes you made that would make it run better or worse... So hard to tell without some more info... Could be as easy as timing or carb settings...

You'd be best to start a new thread on the topic and get answers to your questions there... Just start at the beginning with what you've changed since the last time she ran 'fine'. ;-)

CA-Legal-Vette

Although this sounds like a ton of work for what seems like a simple adjustment, I've never had success without doing this step.

BobbyT454

Thank you again! I'll check out Wilcox for info on the sensor and start a thread regarding the performance issue.
Have a great holiday!
Bob

SwampeastMike

I wish you the same luck I just had! The adjusters had already been replaced (with stainless), were easy to move and I now have very well functioning parking brakes.

NewbVetteGuy

Help!

The cable is actually appropriately loose and it's loose all the way to just outside of the parking brake shoe thingy... Unfortunately, at this point, I think it's just rusted in the "on" position.

Right now in order to actually get to the parking brake shoes I'd have to take the rear calipers off; except I don't own a small enough flare wrench and O'Reilly doesn't sell one that small anyway. Even if I did and could take the calipers off I'd end up getting more air into the brakes and I'd have to bleed them all over again.


Right now my plan is just to hammer on the general area and spray a bunch of PB Blaster in the general area and let it site for an hour and then hammer some more- then clean the rotors off with carb and choke cleaner...


As soon as the battery charges enough to start it and move it again I'm going with this game plan unless someone else has a better idea first.



Adam

wendellp601

You should not need to open the hydraulic brake lines to remove / re-position the rear caliper. Read post number 36 of this very thread.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1574168525

centralcalvette

The fact is that parking brake repair on our cars is straight up difficult. If it's done correctly it's not an issue. You either need to do it yourself or find someone who won't charge you to learn how to do it. I would bet real money that the problem is actually in the parking brake assembly themselves. Either not adjusted correctly or it needs new shoes and hardware. When I bought my Vette my parking brakes didn't work at all. I somewhat recently went through them and replaced the shoes, hardware and some cables that were rusted stuck, now they work perfect. I'm a former automotive tech, and let me tell you it was a real bitch!!

NewbVetteGuy

Here's the rub: the parking brake was working properly until my 4L60e transmission swap. The transmission swap involved a relocated parking cable pulley attached to the BowTie overdrives arched cross member.

When I was under the car looking at the cable I thought -"It's loose enough that I can pull on it, it must be loose enough"; in retrospect that is a terrible thing to assume.


I can verify that when I tighten the parking cable we can see the cable tighten all the way to just before the actual parking brake on the rear wheels.


My next best guess is probably where I should've started which is to start loosening the parking brake cable to see if I can get to a point where the brake comes off. -The threaded adjustment rod was honestly pretty rusty and nasty looking and I'm thinking that the guys re-installing it who did the trans swap may have just loosened it as far as the nut would go until it got into the nasty threads and when it stopped there they said "feels loose enough; probably good."


I sprayed pb blaster with it yesterday and if necessary I can pull out my dremel tool wire brush attachment and clean some crud out of the thread to loosen the cable a bit more and see if the parking brake comes off. -This is probably where I should have STARTED yesterday but in my desire to fix the problem I got a bit irrational and wanted to go nuclear on it...


Adam

NewbVetteGuy

Well




Well, I did have to clean the threads with the Dremel wire brush to loosen the cable; loosened it all the way; still no go parking brake is rusted on.... Ugh!