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I am sure the cables are installed correctly, yes. They are all routed right and attached to the back of the parking brake lever coming out of the hub.
Like I said, the star adjusters are able to fully lock the brakes, so that tells me they are working correctly and there isn't a need to pull the drums.
The passenger rear cable is pulled and moves the lever, but the driver one does not, or moves it very little. Due to all the slack in the system though, that isn't all that surprising as the passenger cable being pulled is what appears to move the driver.
I am just trying to figure out which cable is the problem. But at this point, I am probably just going to replace both.
Like I said, the star adjusters are able to fully lock the brakes, so that tells me they are working correctly and there isn't a need to pull the drums.
No it doesn't. The star adjusters ADJUST the brakes, yes, but the PARKING BRAKE LEVER inside the drum actuates the PARKING brake.
This is an 04 Dakota. The star adjuster is only for adjusting the parking brakes. The regular brakes are caliper and rotor, with the inside of the rotor also being a drum for the parking brake shoes.
Measure all your cables against mine. That will tell you which cable is faulty/stretched. Keep in mind that i measured mine with the brake pedal on the floor as I recall. (I don't have any way to lock the driveshaft in the transmission, so the parking brake is literally THE parking brake).
So it's been a few months but I was finally able to tackle this problem. It was both rear cables, with the main problem being the longer passenger one. Changing those out has brought the adjustment back into much more reasonable territory, as you can see from the pics.
One last question for anyone reading, I tried the adjustment method in the manual, with a 1/4" white marking you see in the picture, but it didn't seem to be changing. So I ended up just adjusting it until I couldn't move the truck by pushing anymore and that seemed to be good enough. I didn't want to overstretch the new cables either.
Has anyone followed the FSM way and had it work out?
Not engaged Not engaged E-brake engaged E-brake engaged
