I'm just wondering if this is a common problem or if something on my truck is not quite right. Both axles I have owned could not hold themselves still on my driveway which is just a very slight hill. If i had a 5 speed i wouldn't care, but one of these days my parking pin is either going to bend or just shear right off when i take it out of park.

The pedal only goes down a couple clicks and when you pull the release handle the pedal flies back up with enough force to rip your hand off. When I swapped rears I noticed that the spring on the parking brake cable in the drum had a lot of tension on it with the parking brake off. I believe that the spring is fully compressed with the parking brake on and that is why the pedal will not go further. Is there a safe way to add some length to the cable under the truck? I don't want to cut any coils off the spring just in case it does not fix the problem and I end up with the parking brake not fully disengaging.

 

Lengthening the cable won't fix it. If, in fact, the spring coils are binding (unlikely), the only way to remedy that would be to adjust your rear brakes if they're out of adjustment or space the cable housing out of the backing plate to give the spring more room.

I suspect it's a brake adjustment issue, but you can test your coil bind theory by removing the drums, stepping on the park brake, and seeing if the pedal goes down farther.

FWIW, my parking brake sucks, too. And my rear brakes are new and properly adjusted.

 

that parking pawl in teh A/T is much stronger than you give it credit for! People been parking auto tranny equipped vehicles w/o settiing the E brake for YEARS! it wont bend and i have worked on alot of cars trucks and A/T's and I have yet to see it happen in 25 years