I am trying to change my rear rotors & pads.

After banging away on the rotor with a mallet and some WD40, I remembered that I had left the parking brake engaged (safety first...).

I disengaged the parking brakes, but the rotor still won't come off. I can pull the rotor out about a 1/4", but the rotor feels like the parking brake mechanism is moving with it when I try to pull the rotor off.

Any thoughts?

 

That's pretty typical with drum brake setups. A ridge of rust forms at the outer edge of the drum's braking surface in the area where the shoes don't rub. That ridge makes it quite difficult to remove the drums, especially if the brake shoes are set up to where the engage without much travel.

There should be a little oval cutout in the backing plate where you could insert a brake spoon to back the shoes away from the friction surface. Sometimes these access holes have a rubber dust plug, other times, if you're the first to use them, the access holes will have a metal knock-out still in place that you need to first break away with a punch/chisel and mallet.

The other option is to continue to attempt to walk the rotor/drum off. Usually there will be a point where the resistance will decrease. You want to be careful to walk the drum off versus tapping on one end way more than the other and binding the rotor up worse.

Good luck!

-Rod