Today I went out and put new rotors on my rear end of my 2000 F-150.... Everything went great but can you guys tell me how to tighten up my emergency brake?? It does not lock up all the way and I want to put a little more pressure on it. Thanks....

 

Bump!!!!

 

Look at the diagram at the end of this album. You have to remove the rotor to get to the adjuster.

 

Thanks Steve for your help.... Guess I will be redoing the brakes again.....

 

Quick question.... How tight should the emergency brake be??????? I can put my truck in drive with emergency brake on and it goes no where, if I hit the gas it will.... Is that tight enough???

 

Are you asking how hard to press the pedal? Press it until the brake holds. If it gets to the floor & won't hold, it's not tight enough.

 

For future reference - the adjuster will adjust automatically. If you would have done a series of brake applies it would eventually tighten up. It only turns just so much per apply. The mechanism is designed this way to account for pad wear.

I can't go into detail on the design in your truck, as I don't know who was making them for that model. But I'm fairly certain that it has a similar design as the current production.

So, as far as how far to tighten - get it close and then the mechanism should adjust on its own to keep things tight.

 

aha... I've found a simple little demonstration of how the generally work...

http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/drum-brake2.swf

 

No, Ford drum-in-hat e-brakes ('97-up w/rear disk) don't autoadjust. That demo is of pure drum brakes w/e-brake. Drum-in-hats must be manually adjusted by removing the rotor, as shown here.