All is back together now and working like new, parking brake self adjusted and like you said, no need to worry about the equalizer as I hadn't unhooked it. Just to note, I also filed the insides of the caliper where the clips go so the pad slides better, looked like the caliper was not the upgraded one as p/n was the same.

Now just need to re-lube the pad clips each year as maintenance and hope the brakes last a few years.

 

I won’t discourage cleaning and relubing the pads once a year - it’s not a bad idea - but I will say that if the rear brakes are needing replacement more often than the fronts, something is going on to cause drag.

Rear brakes only do about 20% of the work (every system is different but that’s the general distribution of force in most vehicles), so as a general rule, assuming everything works correctly, you should only need to replace rear brakes once per 2 sets of front brakes. To clarify a bit (this is just an example I’m not saying these are recommended intervals) if you have a brand new van and replace the front brakes at 30,000 then the rear brakes shouldn’t need to be replaced until the fronts are again at 60,000.

That said there are a lot of variables that affect this - driving habits, climate, amount of weight/cargo hauled on a regular basis, etc - but that’s a guideline.