Parking brake shoes always drag

[FireFox31]

On my 2000 V70, the rear parking brake shoes always drag against the inside of their rotor hats. With the wheels off and brake pads out, it's hard to turn the rotors through half of their revolution. However, I have the brake shoes contracted to their minimum spread using the star adjuster. The brake shoes, springs, and other hardware look new. The hand brake seems to work fine.

With the rotors in place, I can stick a screwdriver through the adjustment hole and move the shoes away from the rotor walls. But after 100 miles, they're back to dragging again.

In one picture, you can see how the lower half of a shoe is worn while the rest aren't. Gravity pulling it down? I'm going to tighten the clips as cn90 said in his parking brake thread: "During removal, the force of pulling off the rotors will pull the Retaining Clips outward a bit. Just push them back in with a screwdriver so they hug the new shoes properly."

I'll also check the cable for the typical breakage as shown in the cn90 thread.

Any other suggestions on how to stop this dragging when everything in the system seems fine?

[scot850]

Check the cables are not dragging. They tend to rust up internally, and on FWD cars just around the mounting point forward of the rear wheels. This should be the only reason for this issue that I can think of. Are your cables held back onto the trailing arms with the plastic hoop and rivet into the arm?

When you adjust the parking brakes how do you do it?

What I have always done is to wind up the star adjuster until the wheel locks and then back it off 2-3 notches max.

Then adjust the center adjusting nut behind the parking brake lever in the car. I will assume you know where this is, but for those that don't, you open the center arm-rest cover, and there is a little 'L' shaped cover at the base of the compartment that is removed using a flat bladed screw driver placed in the small slot in it.

This removed you can see the adjuster. It uses a T50? Torx to turn it. Again, adjust this until you get 4-5 clicks to lock up the rear parking brakes. You may have to adjust again once the brakes have settled.

Looking again at the pictures, the lever arms on the parking brake cable look really crusty. I would remove these from the cable, de-rust and put a little anti-seize on the pivot pin and re-install. Again, these can also seize.

Last thing I have found is that there seems to be 2 sizes of parking brake shoes. I had a set from one of the aftermarket suppliers and I could not even get the rotor back on!!

Neil.

[abscate]

I’ve also found variation on the aftermarket so I’ve moved to Volvo parts on my P80s, especially the stick shifts. I also backup 2 clicks max from lockup so that the top of the shoes are tight on the drum. There can still be scraping when you do this, which is ok.

I see you are using Volvo shoes….

Do check that the cables are pulling smoothly but if the rubber outside is intact, they should be good to go.

[FireFox31]

Thanks for the input. I will check the cables for cracks, take everything apart to clean, then watch the shoes expand/contract as I work the hand brake.

I currently have the star adjuster at minimum spread, dialed so the shoes are closest together, farthest from the rotor walls. I'm trying to prevent the shoes from making any contact. But you're saying I should make them press against the rotor, then back it off only 2-3 clicks? How is that enough to keep them off the rotor walls?

I am tempted to weld a little bar on each shoe which would rest on the top of the vertical clips, preventing the shoe from sliding down and dragging on the rotors. I'm sure that's what one of the shoes is doing since it's worn only on the bottom.

[abscate]

The lower part of the shoe get skinny if the top isn’t adjusted tight. Most don’t get enough slack out of the adjusters, don’t be afraid to have some noise and scraping when it’s right.