If any if you have wanted to replace the little boots on the lever on the backing plate that actuates the parking brakes you have discovered that they are no longer available.

As a substitute I was able to adapt Dorman 924-243 boots for later full-sized Chevy trucks to my 1999 Blazer with rear disk brakes. They need to be trimmed and retaining bracket needs its opening lengthened slightly.

I am hoping these will help keep my new parking brake self adjusters from seizing up again by minimizing the water ingress.


Boot installed with cable attached.



Installed boot without cable attached.



Old boot and retaining bracket. The ones I used to replace the original have thicker rubber. The metal bracket opening had to be lengthened by a bit. A Dremmel tool helped with that.



Old boot.



End view of new, unmodified boot and old one. The base of the new one needs to be narrowed and made less tall. I used a set of small scissors to do it.



Top view of unmodified and modified boots.

 

got em in my amazon cart,thanks....at a later date i plan on replacing the backup plates and park brake hardware,i did replace the rotors awhile ago,looked like a complicated e-brake system,do they have complete kit shoes etc?

 

It is a weird system. There isn't much travel on the brake mechanism itself which means setting the adjusters on the shoes is critical. It can also take a couple tries. The last time I did was over 10 years ago. Now I'm doing it again because they were slipping a bit which is bad when on a boat launch ramp!

I'm actually taking a break from doing the adjustment as as write this. Next I need to reinstall the brakes and test them. There is no way to adjust the shoes once it is all reassembled like you can on regular drum brakes. That means jacking up the truck and removing the rear brakes to get at the shoe adjusters.

As far as I can tell you have to buy the shoes and hardware kit separately.

FYI, even the GM service manual has the image of the park brake system upside down. (GM calls it the park brake rather than the parking brake.)

Here are some pics.

 

When you go to adjust the parking brake shoe adjuster nuts, first back off the equalizer nut on the cable so that there is slack in the system. You'll likely want to spray down the threads with something like PB Blaster, preferably overnight, to free them up. Taking a wire brush to the threads can help too. The nut is a 12 mm and the base of the threads where it is swaged onto the cable is 6mm. You'll only be able to turn the nut about 1/4 turn at a time due to clearance issues. There is no need to disconnect the front half the cable from the rear, although it wouldn't hurt.

Then be sure that the levers that actuate the individual parking brakes at the wheels are in their fully relaxed position so that the adjustment to take up all the slack between the shoes and drum is done correctly. I would also take the the jaws of the pliers to pull the levers forward to expand the shoes to center and fit the shoes to the drum before rotating the rotor on the axle to test for how snug the shoes were. This is where pushing the levers back to their fully relaxed position is required. If too snug or if there is no contact between the shoes and the drum surface, you take the rotor back off and readjust the adjuster nut. Even with what seems like only a little bit of contact between the shoes and rotor as evidence by no noise as you rotate the rotor on the axle (see video below for what this sounds like), getting the rotor back off can take a bit of effort. Finally, I would adjust each set of shoes with the rotor on the opposite side removed to ensure any sense of drag due to the shoes was only from the ones I was trying to adjust.

There is not a lot of travel in the system for either the parking brake mechanism at the wheels or at the pedal. This translates to needing to adjust the shoes first and and then adjusting the equalizer nut. For both, you will need to over adjust them and then back them off just enough to get motion with only light scraping of the shoes on the inside of the drum. The amount of adjustment between too snug and just free enough so that there is only light scraping/drag was about a quarter turn of the shoe adjusting nut.

I've attached a copy of the GM Service manual for the parking brakes for my 99. These instructions are not the best, hence my extra advice. I've added a note in them that one of the pictures in the manual is upside down and added an exploded diagram of the parking brake mechanism at the wheels.

Years ago I had the local dealer do these for me and they came back worse than when they started. LOL

Good Luck!

P.S. This video is a good outline of the procedures, but skips over the adjustment procedure too quickly with few hints.