I upgraded the center console and I had to remove my parking brake lever. I reattached the cable and had the same number of threads showing on the lever. But when I jacked the car up and turned the rear wheels I could still hear dragging even though the brake should be disengaged.

Today I completely loosened the e-brake cable until it was slack to make sure I hadn't made a mistake. But I can still hear pretty bad brake drag, here is a video. What is going on and how can I fix this?

This might not be an issue at all: try putting the wheels back on because the drum isn't squeezed to the rest of the mechanism. But:

Did you adjust the cable at the parking brake lever end or the drum brake end? It could have happened that while working on the 4Runner that the adjustment inside the brake drum got too tight.

Check out @mtbtim 's video. I have it starting from where he goes into that component. : Drum Brake Shoe Replacement - YouTube

The shoes seem to be adjusted on the tight side but you want a good amount of drag on the system so the brake pedal doesn't go to the floor. How does it spin with the wheel on? Did you yank the lever so much that you heard clicks on the rear end? This looks ok to me but I could be wrong so lets see what others have to say on this.

I had issues with this as well. My Ebrake however worked fine and I just pulled it like 40-50 times to make sure they were at the optimal tightness because once it’s “tight” the adjuster will just slip off the bell crank so you can’t ever overtighten them that way.

I’d drive them as they are currently and hit highway speeds for like 15 or so mins. Try your best to coast to a stop using the brakes as little as possible and then get out and feel the drums. If they are crazy hot you need to loosen them a bit.

DONT put much force on your fingertips when touching them either you’ll lose your fingerprints if they are crazy hot, ask me how I know that’s when I decided to just fix my Ebrake

Obviously some heat is fine depending on how much you just used the brakes but when mine were too tight they boiled water I poured on them after a 20 min drive


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Just changing the center console bracket causing this dragging... Hmm... If your bell cranks are not freezing and I believe you in a rust free area. Since you didn't mess with the rear drums this isn't adding up. I would back off the nuts 2 or 4 turns and see if that dragging goes away. If you look closely, the old plate is in the center. The 99 and above move the cable over just slightly so its possible that your cable needs to be slightly looser if you had it perfect before.. :-)

look at your bellcrank adjusting bolts. They may be over-adjusting. It's 1MM from the bellcrank, one each side.

Maybe the parking brake didnt REALLY release all the way before, and releasing the cable made the bellcrank finally going all its course (over 1mm) and over adjust. Have a look at that, takes a few minutes.

You'd have to back off the brake pads using the hole on the back plate if that is the case.

edit: just looked at the video, it isn't as bad as I thought, but I'd back it off until there is very very little to no drag at all, once your adjusting bolt is at 1MM. Self adjustment will take care of the rest.

That looks fine to me too as is. If the drums stopped spinning immediately when you pulled your hand away, I would think that was too tight.

You could loosen up the star wheel and loosen the shoes but, the auto adjust will tighten the shoes back up again. Besides having a loose rear brake affects overall braking. Especially when running Tundra calipers up front.

That is one of the main reasons I always have a cheap laser thermometer in the garage! Testing brakes without actually touching them

This is with a slack cable, I loosened the nut as much as I could without having to run the end of the cable through the parking brake lever again. When I did the swap I also swapped the parking brake and the metal tub in runs through (even though it was identical to my 1998). I suspect this was always a problem, I just never tested it until I did this work.

I did remove the drum before this and I loosened the brake by a single gear tooth (I had watched the timmy video). I removed the drum because the brakes were dragging, so this didn't cause my issue.

I am correct for thinking that drum brakes shouldn't drag at all? These aren't disc brakes, they have springs inside them to pull the shoes inwards away from the drum. I'm mainly doing this because dragging brakes means less efficiency. Also this is a non-ABS 4runner if that matters, it has an LSPV.

Ah. They will drag a little if they are set up properly. So your trying to eliminate this as and have them freewheel some. This would be super easy to accomplish in the rust belt as the bell cranks naturally seize up and the cable can stick.

Man the only way I know to do this would be to remove the arm that runs the adjustment.

Then you have to manually adjust your rear brakes.



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So I reattached the parking brake cable the way I had it, and there is little difference in how it feels. A slack cable feels just about the same to me.

Here's a quick video I took after I set the cable back up, it was harder to spin the drum forwards with one hand than backwards. I made another video spinning the hub in the other direction since I needed both hands free to do it.

I understand why disc brakes drag, there is nothing pulling them away. But why would drum brakes rub, isn't that what all the springs are there for? What is the normal amount of drum brake rub?

too much drag. Have you done step one of this post #11 here for more clarity? (0.4 - 0.8mm)

https://www.toyota-4runner.org/3686135-post11.html

I haven't checked the bell crank, I'll do it tomorrow.

Can I loosen the brake adjustment mechanism and pull the hand brake repeatedly to get it back into proper adjustment?

Yes that’s what I did cause trying to find the proper drag by moving the bell crank was annoying


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yes - IF the bellcrank adjustment bolt is properly adjusted in the first place. Just loosen it until it stops dragging completely then readjust with handbrake

When you'Re done, you can jack the rear, put car into drive, and test both your handbrake and foot brake using your mirrors, you have to look if both wheels stop, no need to use gas(throttle) (don't know if your 4 cyl have tires wide enough so you can see with your mirrors but, you'll know if it's the case)

****** IF your wheels or one of your wheel don't stop, put car into neutral and wait for the tires to stop spinning before putting in park******