Tacoma Brakes

[TomH]

I have a 96 Tacoma that I purchased new and it now has 160,000 miles. Since I've had some brake squeak lately I decided to do a quick check. When I pulled the rear drums, I was a little surprised to find new brake shoes - well at least they looked new. This is the first time the rear drums have ever been removed. So apparently I've spent the last eight years stopping with just the front brakes.

Does this mean the load proportioning valve needs some adjustment? After reading the FSM, there is a pretty good chance I won't be performing that procedure. Can I just make a minor adjustment on the spring length - kind of a trial and error adjustment? How would I know if it worked, other than possibly better braking performance? Or is this the way the proportioning valve is supposed to work and I'm only supposed to have rear brake at full load?

Thanks for any info.

Tom

 

[the shed guy]

may be siezed rear slave cyl in the rear, a crushed brake line, but no rear brake pressure doesnt point to BPV.

 

[TomH]

Darren

Thanks for the reply. I think the problem may be as simple as the self adjusters. After I put things back together, I manually adjusted the brakes. There is a noticeable difference. It's hard to imagine that I haven't applied the brakes hard enough when backing up for the adjuster to work, but I think that may be the case. I'll check it again in a couple of weeks and see how things are working.

Tom

 

[Duane]

Well I searched threads and this is what I dug up....
I adjusted the rear brakes on my 96 runner on the weekend by manually ratcheting the adjuster lever to minimize the clearance between the drums and the shoes.
Everything seems free back there so my question is to others..is this normal for the rear shoes not to adjust automatically?

Is it typical to have to adjust the rear shoes to take up the clearance?