Hi Everyone,
I hope someone can tell me if this is normal or a problem:
Driver's side rear wheel, my emergency brake line is going into backing plate from the rear so that inside the drum
and connected to the park brake lever its in the direction to be connected to the Primary Shoe. The Chrysler service
manual says the park brake lever connects to the secondary shoe. On the passenger side it is connected to the Secondary
shoe. If I bring it through the backing plate the other direction on the Driver's side it will be like the book says but then i'll
have to get another park brake lever, one for that side. Did someone who owned the truck before me screw this up or is this how the factory
set it up?? I found this out because my wheel cylinder went bad and leaked fluid everywhere and park brake light, abs light, and air bag light
all went on when the cylinder blew. I replaced all. everything except the park brake lever. Left that the way it was but lights on dash
wont go out. I also reset the pcm by disconnecting battery ground. PLEASE HELP!!!!!

 

What year? I had my rear drums off my 99
yesterday, both actuating arms are on the rear most shoe.

 

Sorry about that...
1995 Dodge Ram 1500 4wd 5.9L...
342,000 miles !!

 

And I just replaced the Speed sensor in the top of the differential with a brand new one in case that was the cause of the dash lights not going out but
that didnt work.

 

Pretty sure that's not right, gimme a minute, going outside to eyeball mine.....ok, back. Right side feeds from the front, left side feeds from the rear.

 

left side is drivers side right?

 

Yup. Anytime you are talking left and right on a vehicle, picture yourself sitting in the driver's seat. Except Harley Davidson, apparently they do it looking at the front.

 

Apparently my other post didn't go through. On most drum brake systems it really doesn't matter what shoe the cable/actuator arm is attached to. All the cable does is pull the arm which in turn pushes the spreader bar, forcing both shoes outward to activate the parking brake. On our vehicles this also pulls up on the adjuster cable causing the adjuster arm to rachet, thereby keeping the rear shoes adjusted, at least that's the way it is designed to work, reality is that the self adjuster set up never works well. Two types of drum brakes, dual servo, like ours, where the wheel cylinder pushes the shoes out, this causes the primary shoe to to try to rotate, forcing the secondary shoe to grip even harder. Most imports use a single servo(and a lot of imports and front drive vehicles) where the shoes are operated equally by the cylinders, this is because the bottom of the shoe sits against a solid anchor point.

 

I can't figure out why your airbag light would have come on. Brake warning and ABS should come on when you blow something, but the airbag makes no sense to me. If the brake and ABS lights haven't gone out after repairing the system, try resetting the proportioning valve(I've seen them stick) and/or you have air still trapped in the ABS pump.

 

I think the theory on the brake cables going in from opposite sides is to give better holding forward and reverse. With both cables on same side, parking brake tends to hold better in one direction than other. I think there was a problem with trucks not holding on hills and driveways. Check to see if your vehicle has a rear anti-lock valve in the lines to the rear, they can cause problems. It is a unusual situation, but the steering column clock spring may have broken, unrelated to the wheel cylinder issue. A scan tool may read Air-bag codes.