I have a 64 C10. My right rear brake was dragging bad and getting very hot. I had just replaced a leaking wheel cylinder on that wheel a week ago. Although my shoes and springs need to be replaced, everything should be in working order with the new wheel cylinder. So the first thing I did was crack open the brake bleeder on that wheel. There wasn’t any residual pressure which would indicate a problem in the brake line between the wheel and master cylinder. So that issue is scratched off the list. I looked at my emergency brake cable running along the trailing arm and saw there was quite a bit of slack in the cable. I looked at the left side and it was pretty tight. So I figure my emergency brake cable is sticking on the bad side. My first attempt at solving the issue was to soak the cable with PB Blaster. I waited a while for it to soak in. I worked the emergency brake several times, quite aggressively, but it did not free the cable.
So, I decided a little force is necessary. Luckily, I had a few pictures on my phone of the brake setup with the hub off from when I replaced the wheel cylinder. I deducted where the outer edge of the axle flange would be and proceeded to drill a hole in the hub just outside of the axle flange. I wound up with a hole of about 1/2”. Once I had the hole drilled, I was able to spin the drum in reverse, to give myself a line of sight to the emergency brake lever and cable inside the hub. With this new hole, I was able to use a punch, which happens to be a SBC pushrod, to hammer the emergency brake cable lever backwards, which released the tension on the shoes. I plan to order new cables. For now, I stuck some blue masking tape to my emergency brake lever to remind me to not engage it!! Now, as far as the new drilled hole in the hub goes.....I used a sanding cartridge on my die grinder to deburr and smooth the hole. I have no worries about it cracking at that spot but y’all need to make that decision for yourselves.
