Parking brake adjustment on 2001 Chevy Silverado 2500hd?

Answer 1

okay its not easy but you need a brake adjuster tool curved spoon type tool, jack up passsenger side rear remove tire, adjuster star can be accesses without removing rotor and caliper, you need to poke your head in the wheel well area, and the adjuster is near the top of backing plate, i used a little mechanics mirror, this will help you navigate the brake spoon into the hole with the little rubber dust boot. (remove the boot and you will see a star tooth rotater, try to rotate the star so that you see some threads on the adjuster showing, they say 5mm but lets say maybe smidget less than 1/4" but you need to rotate till the rotor is very hard to rotate by hand. now apply foot e brake, then put a jimmy bar between the studs on the rotor and try to roate by brute hand force, if don't move your good, try release and should trun by hand freely... now good luck put tire back on and try the same on driver side, driver side easier because on the bottom of wheel backing plate and you can see better.I just put all new pads rotors and iam fine tuning my e brake on 2002 hd crew cab with only 25,000 miles brake swere all shot form non use rusted out Chevy no good new system, like drum brake better.

I recently found that you can take the tire off, unbolt the caliper and take the rotor off (not very hard to do). You then can access the star tooth rotator without having to get under the vehicle or trying to get through the boot. Very easy to see this way. Hope this helps.

There is no cable adjustment that I have found and pumping the parking brake pedal as recommended in other threads does nothing for the parking brake action that I could discern. If you're having a tough time, jack up the car, remove the wheel, unbolt the caliper and lay it out of the way on top of the leaf spring and slip the rotor out away from the backing plate about an inch and a half so you can see the star tooth rotator. If the brake rotor is rusted to the axle, tap around the edge of the parking brake drum with a 3 lb hammer to loosen it. Using a screwdriver or other suitable tool, turn the star rotator to adjust the parking brakes as far out as you can but not so far that they bind the parking brake drum when you slide the brake rotor back into position--a slight drag is okay, but the brake shoes shouldn't overly interfere with the parking brake drum. This adjustment gave me good pedal action on the parking brake, but it still doesn't hold very well in gear unless I MASH the PB pedal to the floor. I will bed the parking brake shoes in a bit and then give the star rotator another click or two until I get a good PB action. Hope this helps and that the GM engineer that designed this system spends his eternity in Hell adjusting parking brakes!