[Nathan Plemons]

Recently while under the truck, my mechanic and I noticed that the front brake pads were getting pretty thin. I knew the rotors were warped from a pretty bad braking vibration I had. Knowing the age, and mileage, I figured it would be a good idea to just go ahead and do them all.

I bought pads, rotors, shoes, and drums. I started with the fronts and encountered no problems. One of the wheel bearings was pretty bad so I went ahead and replaced them as well. Only when I got to the back did things start surprising me.

When I pulled off the drum I found surprisingly little wear, there was no groove, I did not even have to back off the shoes to get it off. There was a little brake dust, but not much. I was very surprised to find that the liners on the shoes were every bit as thick as the new ones. Both sides were like this. I cleaned everything off with brake cleaner and put it back together. Following the advice of a mechanic friend I adjusted them manually until they just started to drag.

What happened next really surprised me. With the rear axle still in the air I ran the truck up to about 50 MPH and slammed on the brakes. Without the inertia of the truck to help it along, I expected one or both of the wheels to lock up instantly, they did not. In fact they coasted to a stop after 4 to 6 complete revolutions! I can't hardly believe this is normal, but I was afraid to manually adjust them any tighter for fear that they would drag all the time.

When I put the truck back on the ground I noticed that the rear brakes were working better, at least as far as the parking brake is concerned. Typically the parking brake wouldn't hold the truck in reverse, only going forward, now it will hold both directions. I took it back to my mechanic friend the other day and had him take a look at it. With the rear wheels off the ground again they would spin just as free as possible. He adjusted them again until they just started to drag and said that this should be good enough. I told him that I actually had them a little tighter than that before and he was very surprised that it wouldn't lock them up.

The only thing we can really think of is that maybe the shoes weren't really "centered" inside the drum, and by adjusting them as such, only the fronts or rears, are dragging and after several applications they work slightly more towards center. Neither of us can believe that Ford would have wasted the time to install ABS brakes on the rear axle if it's not even capable of locking them up while free spinning. Even the non power assist brakes on my dad's 1946 will lock up the wheels if they're in the air. Everything about these brakes seems to work, but obviously not well.

Is this a case of off center shoes and malfunctioning auto adjusters, or do the rear brakes just suck that bad? I find it nearly impossible to believe the latter. Is it possible that the pads could be so glazed that they would work no better than this?

Thanks