Where did you drill xtra holes if I may ask. When I put my brakes back together I did not have enough adjustment on the park brake. I t turned out that I failed to reassemble the primary lever correctly. I reassembled and have plenty of adj.
There are a couple of "supplemental adjustment holes" on the fore/aft connecting bar. I added another hole to each end. And then I also added another hole to each of the sliding cross bars. (For anyone in the future, these pieces are all hardened, and you'll smoke a couple of good drill bits!)
It's better, but it's still not right.
When I bought the truck, the cables had an owner-modified clamp on them that took out some excess length. I replaced them with a set of cables from my local parts store. The more I tinker with it, the more I'm convinced the cables themselves aren't right.
There are two slots in the X-frame that the slider bars are supposed to travel in. Because of the length of the cables, I've noticed that the bars are almost all the way forward in their slots. If the cables were about 4 inches shorter, the problem wouldn't exist.
Furthermore, the "return" on the brake handle is really soft. It doesn't release by itself, it has to be pushed in when I release it. There are springs coiled around the brake cable inside the drum--they go from the end of the cable where it passes into the drum, to the park-brake arm. On other vehicles, I've really had to muscle that spring to get the cable off the arm. On these, the springs seem short, and don't require hardly any compression to pull the cable off the arm. I believe that spring is also responsible for putting pressure on the cable so that when you release the handle up in the cab, the cable automatically retracts.
I guess I'll try another set of cables from LMC or someone and see if A) they're shorter and B) the spring at the brake-drum end is longer.
-Brad
