Parking brake cable replacement

I'm pretty late in getting to this but I just finished this job this weekend. You can remove the mounting bolt from the front but it means removing the hub and the brake shoes as well which is a bit of a pain though that could be since I haven't changed shoes before. On my car, and I am guessing most of a similar age, the brake backing plate had rusted and to remove it you need to pull the hub which likely means changing that too. It's not a huge job with the shoes removed anyway but not a cheap part. The small 10mm bolts mounting the brake cable under the car were all rusted as well. I'd grab replacements before starting since they are really cheap. The first one broke which added a lot of time so be careful with those. The frontmost mounting bolts are above the exhaust heatshield but I was able to reach in with a crescent wrench and take those out without removing the shield. To get at the cables in the car, you need to remove the center console but that is a really easy job. Five 10mm bolts and two pop out rivets and you are good. Be sure to remove the metal bracket the console bolts down to too. I tried to work around it at first but the edges are sharp as hell. It took a bit of frigging around adjusting the cables to get good grab without any drag but it's nothing too complicated. After trying to adjust the old cables that has rusted in place, adjusting the new ones was a breeze!

 

@vand8 did you use the parking brake regularly? Is NY the city or elsewhere in the State; are you in heavily salted winter conditions?

I watch a fair bit of South Main Auto, and man, salt is a killer.

 

There is no need to touch the hub for the parking brakes. I installed the cable after my hubs were in. The backing plate is the sticky one if its too rusted to hold the parking brake cable bolt. It can only be changed by removing the hub. The only chance you might have to otherwise is that one of the small pins that passes through the back of the backing plate and then through the shoe can't be removed/installed with the backing plate in place and that means removing the hub. Why that is designed like that I can't understand at all. My old pin was rusted out so when I was initially just changing the shoes I just bent the new pin to be able to curve it in and straightened it after. It held up but when I later decided to change the whole brake shield and hub and tried to reinstall the shoes, the pin ended up snapping where it had been bent and I had to make a trip to the parts store just for that

I was able to pull the hub just using an air hammer to get it rotating then a pry bar to knock it out. Since my hubs were toast anyway I didn't mind hammering and pulling on it but I'm not sure if they would hold up to being reused after that.

 

^ Why I always buy new.