wing0

Decided to replace the parking brake shoes as full maintenance on the rear brake system along with new pads and rotors.
One corner had basically no friction material on the top portion of the brake shoe, I thought maybe it was just lubrication issue or my dad forgot to release the parking brake.

After painfully assembling it with new brake shoes and adjusted the star wheel to shortest length, I could not put new rotor on. I grind and lubricated all the contact points.
It was off by 2-3mm and I tried wiggling the shoes to set them better, no go.

It was getting late, needed the car for today, I swapped everything back to old brake shoes just to put the new rotor/pads on.
I did not see the brake shoes move when I engaged the parking brake and also the cable going to that side seems tight even when parking brake is disengaged.

I did notice some rust where the parking brake cable was coming through the dust shield.
Maybe the cable rusted there?
Is there some bolts holding the cable there that I can loosen or just spray penetrating oil through all the cable openings and hope it moves?
I looked at the service manual and don't see actual section talking about removing the cable from the dust shield.
I want some opinion/suggestion before I try again on the weekend as it's really time consuming to put back the parking shoe assembly(I did it twice to accomplish nothing )

salimshah

My rough understanding is that there is a "Y" which splits a single cable into two. Under normal condition, both arms of the Y should move freely to engage/release each brake. I would suggest that you separate the cable from the sticking side brake and see if that arm of the cable moves freely [pulls when brake is applied and can be pulled with brake released]. This procedure will isolate the trouble and you can determine the problem is with the brake or that arm of the cable. There can be dirt stuffed in the passage way of the cable. This may explain abnormal wear of the pad,

Salim

wing0

When I have parking brake disengaged, I can see there is slack on the working side and the cable to the non-working side is still tight.
It would explain why I couldn't put rotor on new shoes. I believe when engaging the parking brake, it's pulling tight on the working side as that horseshoe like splitter is about distributing the tension.

Under normal circumstance, I should be able to pull the cable outwards from the dust shield if it's not seized right?
I didn't have time to take apart the working side(nor did I want to create more headache late night).

Any other thoughts by anybody would be appreciated.

salimshah

Retraction happens due to spring in the brake mechanism. The star nut gives the minimum retracted position. Make sure you lower the start nut and that should allow the drum to be removed. Use a rubber mallet and strike the drum [outer surface -- sides to rattle the contents to move back]. Spin the drum by hand and only try to pull when you can spin the drum, else you will **** the mechanism to a side and it will bind.

Mostly you can find videos on the the disc brakes, but hopefully you can find one on drum brakes. The parking brake mechanism is very much the same. My learning was that the parking brakes do not have self adjustment.

Salim

wing0

It feels like the cable is not loosening fully and I've tried pushing the cable a bit where it is routed under the driver.
I've watched that video and this one is more closer to what RX300 has: It's the same person and he has issue putting the rotor back on and had to shave off the friction material.

The issue is that the bad side doesn't engage the shoes at all so it's like frozen and in a semi expanded state. It's just my guess at this point.