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Parking brake pedal refurb.


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After over 5 years without a parking brake I finally bit the bullet and pulled the pedal assembly out in an attempt to fix it.  I'm not the first guy to document fixing one of these but I took a little different approach and wanted to share my method and progress with y'all. 

 

I didn't take any pictures of the slop the pedal had in it before, but you could shift the pedal left to right with your toe and it would release at random... no bueno for a parking brake  :rotf:

I had to remove the fuse block to get to the bolt at the top right of the pedal; on top of that the nut (welded to the body under the fender) broke free and I had to call in some reinforcements to help get it out.  Once the drama was over I hosed the whole thing off with some brake clean and ground these two rivet heads off;

 

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After these two are free all the individual pieces can be separated and inspected;  

 

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By the looks of the teeth on the pedal side I figure that the pawl must be grabbing only the inside edge.  I took my chances and decided to attempt "sharpening" them up with a file (not very effective) and a really thin wheel on a dremel... Should work fine   :crossfingers:

 

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Next, I cut down the top side of the big rivet down a bit past the original surface.  The goal here is to get a nice and flat surface to work with that is slightly shorter than the original setup.  

 

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Next I marked the center and center punched it; 

 

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Next I drilled the stud to 21/64" in preparation for a 3/8" x 24 tap.  

 

Note: do this with a drill press if you have one; by hand it was a bit sketchy especially at the last step where I must have wobbled around too much and made the hole juuuuust a bit oversize.  

 

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The tap process went real crappily and i really thought about going one size up for the stud, but I don't think there's enough material left for reliable results.  It'll get lots of red loctite!

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My primary issue was the pedal having a bunch of lateral play that caused poor teeth engagement with the pawl; and it had been happening for a while (hence the uneven wear that I had to correct).  Simply changing how hard the pawl teeth bit into the pedal teeth would have been a band-aid at best in my case.  This should be a permanent fix so long as the stud stays put in those lousy threads I tapped  :shake:

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Installed it last night. This is a picture of where the bolt passes through the dash brace and the pedal. This is welded to the body from the factory.. 25 years ago. A replacement nut with some RTV does the trick just fine.

 

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I'm not sure what else to post besides to say that it works sitting still in the garage

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Satisfied to say that I set the brake and walked away from the truck with it idling for the first time in 6 or 7 years; never though something so simple could be so great! :clapping: 

I had my students clean, lube, and adjust the rear brakes and I adjusted the front cable.  Now I just need to find a pedal pad and "stop" to put between the bracket and the pedal.  

 

WELL WORTH THE EFFORT!

 

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
Great writeup, thanks!

 

Over the years I've broken several parking brake release cables. They seem to fray at the far end, it doesn't look like there are any sharp edges, I think just repeated use causes them to fail.

 

I've started pressing down on the pedal before pulling the release. When I don't do this, there is quite a bit more  force required to release the parking brake. When I press down on the pedal, the release pulls very very easily.

 

I'm guessing it'll be hard to get replacements for the release cable, so I'm hoping this one will last a while!

 

Gene

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  • 1 month later...

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