Hi all, been a while since I've been around here. Busy with a bunch of non-car-related stuff, but I've still been chipping away here and there as time allows.

Can anyone furnish a picture or describe how the parking brake actuator lever in the rear drum assy. (the one that hooks to the rearmost brake shoe near the top) is supposed to look when properly installed? I thought the lower portion of the lever tucked behind the rearmost shoe, as that's the position it tends to naturally fall into, but this results in the strut bar falling out of place.

If the bottom of the actuator lever is pulled forward, it holds the brake strut in place perfectly, but this requires all of the tension than I can provide since I'm out of adjustment threads on the front parking brake cable. Even then, the pedal feels all wrong, very hard and resistant (and still no parking brake). Plus, this only holds the strut bar in place enough to keep it from falling out, never mind actually pushing the brake shoe against the drum... Which is the whole point of the thing being there.

CSM only has an exploded view of the drum assembly, which doesn't help me in this instance.

All cable segments are new and behave just the same as the old crusty originals did. With the help of a friend I've determined that the cables do move when the pedal is pushed, so I'm inclined to believe it's something about those actuator levers giving me grief. All of the lube points for the cables are properly lubed and none of the cables seem to be binding up. The brakes themselves work great and even the auto-adjuster assemblies do their thing without a problem.

I'll try to get photos when I can, if that'll help, but not sure when I'll have the opportunity to go pulling wheels off again. Thanks for any help, this one really has me confounded.

EDIT: All cables are from Bruin. My original intermediate cable was stretched out from years and years of use, so I wasn't able to use it as a reference against the new one when I installed it. Could a slightly-too-long middle cable possibly cause this?

 

Here is a picture of rear GM brakes. Although the shoe sizes change I don't believe the configuration does. If the bar is falling out it may be in backwards (flipped over), the spring may be missing on the end, or the adjustment is wrong.

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-tutorial.html

 

It does go behind the shoe and if the shoes and cable are not properly adjusted, the strut bar WILL fall out of place. Ask my how I know this...

 

Thanks, Eric. The strut bar is indeed installed the correct way (in '67 big cars they're only directional from front to back, narrow slot/wide slot, otherwise just a straight piece of steel). The wider slot is on the side with the actuator lever and the rear brake shoe, the narrower slot is on the side with just the front brake shoe, the spring only fits on the narrow side since only that side has the little "step" for the spring to settle on. Always good practice to stop and consider the little things that might have been put together wrong though.


Joe: Holy cow, that's some ugly damage. Did that happen on your '67 Delta?
Pretty scary how that solid piece of steel got twisted!

So I'm gathering that with proper cable tension, the actuator lever should be held forward enough at the bottom to hold the strut bar in place at the top. I suppose an intermediate cable being just a little bit too long might cause it to never draw up tight enough.

Are there any specs for how long the cable should be, so I can confirm with Bruin that they're cutting their cables to the proper length for this application? They make their cables to order based on model and year, it wasn't a "universal fit" cable and yet something is definitely not right here.

 

If your cables seem too long make sure the hook on the opposite side of the cable adjuster is both correct in the proper location.

 

The hook looks like it's never been off the car and is in the place shown in the CSM, but come to think of it I never messed with it in all my efforts to get this thing working. I'll have a look at it, maybe I need to adjust it to add a little extra missing tension.