So sunday I was working on my truck and I had it all jacked up and I discovered I have no rear brakes. Id put the truck in drive and mash the brake pedal and the rear wheels dont even slow down. Took it to les schawb to have them bleed the brakes in case it was air in the lines but the bleeder on the drivers side is seized. So they want to charge almost 700 dollars to comepletly redo the rear-end brakes. Well thats alot of money and I could pay a little more and do a disc brake conversion. But Whatever the issue is I dont think I need to completely rebuild the entire rear brakes. There has to be something simpler and cheaper.

So my question is, what can be causes for the rear brakes to not be working? My fronts work fine (been driving for who knows how long with just the front brakes). Only things i can think of is air in the lines or maybe could the shoes not be adjusted correctly? Maybe they are working just not coming in contact with the drum? The mechanic also said something about the master cylinder could be bypassing the rear brakes? because my pedal feels fine.



Another question. Got my tach installed and I was curious what RPMS yall are running. My idle is 1500 and cruising at about 65 is 3600 rpms which seems pretty high. Not uncommon for me to be in the 4 thousands and Ive even hit 6 thousand on the interstate in a downshift

 

Master cylinder bypassing the rears? B1tch please.

I wouldn't go back to them just for saying that. Your truck is 21 years old, it doesn't know what to do about bypassing stuff!


Have you tried the old reverse-slam-on-brakes-skid-the-tires-adjustment trick yet?

As for rpms, your idle is high, I'd be looking at how the tach is adjusted.

 

lol. Im gonna check the FSM to get some ideas.

And no I havnt done that but it sounds fun lol

 

It's not hard, but do it on pavement if you've got it. You'll need traction.

 

Got plenty of pavement..sadly haha.

Oh and how can I tell how the tach is adjusted?

 

Good. I just back out of my driveway and gun it in the road. lol

Some tachs will have adjustments for I4, V6 and V8. And you select the engine you've got, any more than that, I've no idea.

 

Ah, there is a switch on the back. Ill check it out. I got a cheapo tach that didnt come with any instructions

 

It's a start.

 

Also just did some quick checking about a disc brake conversion and it looks like its quite cheaper than I though and pretty straight forward with a full floating axle

 

Just tried the switch the switch on the back and got it to 800 rpms for idle.

thanks dodge dude