What ever - I don't make a habit of trying to convince a brick wall --- I'M OUT......

 

+ for that.

In sense of an auto-adjuster? Of course! They could automatically pick the slack of a mechanism while the brake lining wears.

I haven't ever had an similar parking brake issue with any of the other cars I owned. I've learn something new with my Blazer. You may call me a brick too...

 

Christine here. Mike.308 mentioned me earlier.

I use my 1999 to tow my boat which means that it is really important to me to have the parking brake work when I'm launching my boat!

Many years ago I had the problem of my parking brakes not holding and I thought I'd take it to the local dealer to have them fix it for me. (Yeah, I know, I was being lazy. LOL) Well, it came back worse. I took it back and it still did not work right after they worked on it a second time. To fix it I had to spend an afternoon back home taking it all apart to learn how it was suppose to work.

What I learned is that one of the parking brake designs used by GM, like on my 1999 with rear disc brakes, is one in which the the rear rotors have on their inside surface a drum that mates with dedicated shoes that are engaged by a cable connected to the park-brake pedal. This mechanism is separate from the actuation of the rear disc brakes. As such, there are two adjustments to be made; to the shoes and to the cable. If the shoes are not adjusted correctly, there will not be enough travel in the cable for the shoes to be engaged.

In contrast for vehicles with rear drum brakes, the mechanism used on them is to have a supplemental mechanism to the wheel cylinders that expands the shoes against the inside surface of the drum. Because for these there are only the one set of shoes, the self-adjusting mechanism will keep the shoes close to the inner surface of the drums.

So, if your rear brakes are of the design as illustrated in post #27 by Mike, then a required part of the parking brake adjustment is to adjust the shoes of the parking brake mechanism. When done properly, this adjustment minimizes the distance between the shoes and the inside of the drum (that is part of the rotor) so that the the cable can be pulled far enough to engage the parking brake.

BTW, during my time trying to work out how the parking brake is to be adjusted I learned that the Haynes manual I had been using had incomplete instructions on how to service the parking brakes and even had the picture of them UP-SIDE-DOWN!

Even after I got a copy of the GM Service Manual for my 1999 Blazer, it still took me a couple years before I stumbled on the instructions for how to adjust the parking brake shoes but by then I had worked it out for myself.

I'm attaching the excerpts from my manual in case you or anyone else might find them useful. The instructions for the adjustment for the shoes are on page 5-122 but the instructions for the cable adjustment are on page 5-132.

Good Luck!

 

Many thanks!
I will give this to my mechanic and see if he can adjust the parking brake so it finally works.
I haven't worked on the brake myself: he has, so he'll understand it, not me.
Again.... many thanks: Yours: Indrek

 

You are very welcome. Be sure to tell us how things work out.

Good Luck!