Drum brake star adjuster not self adjusting

I noticed some weak braking one day several months ago when I had to stop abruptly. The brakes felt like they weren’t quite up to the task. Then, a few weeks ago I bought a small 2500 lb. GVWR trailer that was probably around 1700 lbs. the day I towed it home. The trailer has electric brakes and I’d installed a brake controller prior to picking it up. On the drive home I experienced another instance of weak breaking performance, although it was worse than the previous time I described, probably because of the added weight of the trailer. Since then, I’ve been reading about and looking over the rear braking components to see if I could find any issues.

One of the first things I did was to back off the star adjuster and then use the parking brake to try and see if it was properly self adjusting by watching through the access port to see if the wheel would advance as the parking brake was engaged. It would not, which led me to remove the drum to dig a little deeper.

I discovered I have a less common drum setup which I haven’t been able to find out too much about. Most Toyotas with drum brakes seem to have the self adjusting lever of the star adjuster on the outboard side of the adjuster. Mine is on the inboard side and it does not seem to work as expected. When I pull on the parking brake cable the star wheel does not move at all.

Because of this thread - https://www.tundras.com/threads/drum-brake-star-adjuster-lever-revisited.94151/ - I’m wondering if I could have an aftermarket star adjuster which it isn’t quite up to the task. I’m not 100% sure how to tell if it is original or an aftermarket replacement though and would welcome any help with this question.

The truck has about 120K and the pads look to me as though they might be newer because they seem pretty thick, but I don’t know.

Based on everything I read on here, I can’t tell where anything is incorrectly installed. I can’t see the area very well on the inboard side of the fork where the tab is supposed to be inserted in the notch in the fork, but I believe it is in the correct position.

At this point, I’m sort of stuck at not being able to figure out why the self adjuster isn’t working unless it is because it’s an aftermarket part.

Any thoughts?

Here are a few pics.

 

Later years put the self-adjuster on the inside.

I've seen similar problems to yours in the past, when people used aftermarket adjusters.

I know people on here with more than 200k miles and are still on the original shoes out back. Especially people who lift their truck and don't adjust or relocate the LSPV armature.

Toyota still sells the OEM adjuster for our later-year trucks. The pre-2003 guys are not so lucky. Toyota is slowly taking all the parts offline/NLA.

 

I did find these marks, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for exactly.

 

I wish I had a better pic of my OEM adjuster, but this is my near-80k original mile 2006 AC which should have identical rears to you. I also have a pair of brand new OEM adjusters in a box I can shoot a pic of later, if you want and/or it helps?

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Aftermarket adjuster have slightly different teeth that don’t engage properly

 

Here you go, two OEM adjusters new in the package. Note they're different per side, and one star wheel is black while the other is white, dunno whassup with that. The sticker would suggest the parts were special order (SPORD in the dealer area of sticker)

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I had a situation one time where the guy who installed them at a non Toyota shop reversed the polarity. IIRC, one side threads right, the other lefty. Also, those adjusters call for copious amounts of anti-seize.

Is the lever making contact with the star wheel, just not advancing it?

 

Yes!

 

This shouldn’t be an issue. Just order them and pick them up at the dealership. You generally have two weeks to return if uninstalled.

Compare them to what you have. If they’re identical, just return them. If they prove you’ve got aftermarket, replace them. Problem solved, well, if it’s the latter.

 

Drum Brake Star Adjuster Lever (revisited) | Toyota Tundra Forum

There's alot in the thread I linked above. Long story short is 1) you need to confirm the ear on the adjuster tab is properly installed, and 2) Napa and probably all other aftermarket do not have the fork tabs machined correctly so the adjuster tab will never work. Gotta use Toyota OEM. Good luck.

 

That thread is what inspired me to order new. After @FirstGenVol informed me the OEM adjusters are NLA for the '00-'02 trucks, I had my suspicions they'd become NLA on the later years next.

 

Here's pics of my 06 DC with original brakes. You can see the marking on the edge of the friction material. It looks like yours so maybe your shoes are original.
I lubed my adjusters years ago.
I manually adjust my rear brakes every year. I use my parking brake all the time but still find the brakes loose when I do my adjusting.

 

Yeah, we had one of our members on here (last year?) with 300k original miles, still on original shoes.

 

Mine just rolled past 82k miles.

 

Gotcha, so we're basically the same, and showing roughly the same wear. Guess that explains why someone can hit 200-300k with the original shoes.

 

People are going 200-300k miles because they aren’t adjusting their rear brakes.

 

I'm not following. During driving the wheel cylinder pistons extend to press the shoes into the drum and create brake shoe wear. The star adjuster has no influence on this process. When hydraulic pressure is applied the pistons will extend until the shoe contacts the drum or they will fall out of the wheel cylinder bores trying.

When the car is stationery and parking brake applied, the amount of travel by the brake shoe is limited by the linkages and geometry of the parking brake cable hence why the star adjuster is supposed to keep the shoes within a certain tolerance to the brake drum, call it .5mm. As the shoe wears down over time, if the adjuster is not functioning, the distance from the shoe surface to the drum will increase beyond the ability of the parking cable to extend the shoes. Shoes can't extend far enough, shoes can't press into the drum with enough force, not enough friction on the drum to prevent your truck from rolling down the driveway.

If you want to discuss rear brake shoe longevity, wear, and braking force, then we need to talk about the load proportioning valve which is a hornet's nest of its own.

 

This may be true in a balanced, all drum brakes scenario. However, these are rear drum and front disk with front bias, and when the rears get out of adjustment, the fronts end up doing more of the work. The rears being out of adjustment creates less pressure being applied to the rears, so less wear.

 

Thanks for all the helpful replies, I really appreciate it.

I was leaning towards the idea the parts were aftermarket, but the more I looked around and the more replies I received, the more I started to wonder if they were actually OEM adjusters because the markings on the pads seemed to be the same as pics of other OEM rear brake setups I found like gagecalman’s. If the shoes are original and/or OEM then the adjusters seem likely to be OEM as well.

I know they can last forever because my 96’ Taco - original owner - has the original shoes/drums and is around 207K. They have been on my list of things to check on too. I know they need some attention because the parking brake isn’t working as well as it should.

I appreciate shifty taking the time to image his OEM adjusters, but I wasn’t able to make any determinations from them. I show 47061-35030 as being the right rear adjuster and wondering if shifty can confirm if his black one is the same part number. I show 47062-35030 as the left rear. Also, is the one without the black star wheel all silver colored or is it silver and brass colored? In gagecalman’s pic it appears as though the black one is on the right rear.

I think my left rear adjuster might be brass colored on the rear side of the adjuster, but with the terrible artificial lighting in my garage I can’t quite tell for sure.

At this point I’m going to get in there and service/lube the existing parts and see if that changes anything. I will pull the adjuster to clean/lube it and take a pic of it in the daylight. If I still can’t get the self adjusting mechanism to work I will check the right rear/passenger side to see if the adjuster over there is black.

It’s also a bit weird to order parts in this scenario since the diagrams in both the FSM and at Toyota-USA.epic are from the other style.

I’m assuming, if for instance, I needed the lever - which is different on the two setups - that I would use the part number in the diagrams I have for the lever on setup A. The parts people will handle it and make sure I get the lever not shown in the diagrams I have, but the correct one for my truck with setup B, but I’m not sure. Even though the setups are different, they seem to have all the same/corresponding parts as far as I can tell.

I’m planning to try a new to me Toyota parts supplier - discountedtoyotaparts.com - who is on the west coast and has good prices. The closer distance will help enormously with both shipping cost and speed. I reached out to ask how I should go about making sure I get the correct parts in this odd situation and no one has responded for 48 hours. Pretty LAME!

The one additional detail I discovered is that the adjuster seems a tiny bit wobbly from side to side. If I grasp it, I’m able to rotate it slightly. The movement occurs where the fork interfaces with the shoe, but there isn’t a ton of slop, it is just a little.

 

These two things are likely related

 

Sorry, for the confusion, the first part of the quote is about my 96' Taco rear drums.

The second part of the quote is about the Tundra and the parking brake on it is currently disconnected at the bell crank. Do you think the wobble might be because the parking cable is disconnected?

 

Without a functioning parking break, it’s gonna be near impossible to dial in appropriate brake function in these trucks.

 

Maybe possible to get the initial dial-in done, but won't stay dialed-in for long.

 

I think we overlook the stupid LSPV too. Every time I haul my dirt bike it's obvious my brakes are better. Nothing I do with manually adjusting it helps though. I need to delete the damn thing and install a Wilwood.

 

I'm a little confused.

I do understand that when the parking brake is applied its supposed to index the star to expand the shoes if there is too much gap between them and the drum and also that there is nothing that will move the star to loosen the drag unless you manually do it.

So why can't someone just remove the rubber plug and manually adjust the star. As we know the shoes on these last forever so it doesn't seem like it takes that many click to make them drag.

I actually do it once a year and haven't had any issues. Good brakes and no nosediving.
This is what I do:
Jack the rear and support the diff on jack stands.
Put truck in neutral. Rotate each tire by hand and feel for drag.
Remove the rubber plugs and manually adjust the stars with a small screwdriver on both sides a few clicks at a time.
After each adjustment I start it up and put it in drive and while the tires are slowly rotating apply the brakes a few times to seat everything.
Shut it off and check for drag again.

I guess in my mind I'm doing what the parking brake is supposed to do. It's not like it's indexing the star every time you apply the brake.

BTW I use my fully functioning parking brake all the time and every time I check the rear brakes there is no drag and I have to manually adjust them.

Just my thoughts on this.

 

My star wheel adjuster seem to rarely adjust. At each oil change / tire rotation, I crawl under there and do exactly what @gagecalman describes. I pull the plug and manually adjust the star wheel. Sometimes they are already close to dragging slightly, sometimes I have to give it 5-7 clicks. I’m on my second set of pads in 275k miles. Haven’t pulled the drums to check wear lately, but when I swapped my spare tire on and had to beat on the spacer to get it off, a pretty good amount of brake dust filtered out onto the floor.

 

Ok, good thread. I too am having any issue.

Manually adjusting the stars obviously leads to improvement, but they are not automatically ratcheting... My parking brake also goes almost to the floor and hardly engages.

First I watched the action of the pedal move the cable to the diff, and then move the cables to each wheel. I then watched the bell cranks move too.. I believe that is all functioning as expected.

Upon removal of the drums, I could not get the star ratchet to auto adjust. Do the drums need to be on for this action to work? Or should it be visible with the drum off?

I put my foot on the bell crank arm and leg pressed it away from me, watching the shoes move but no auto clicks. I cleaned some stuff off but didn't take it apart. I can watch the bell crank move the whole distance allowed by the opening in the back plate... But the arm that that should be interfacing with the ratchet doesn't move at all.. even tho it does sit on the star teeth.


Upon reassembly, I gave a couple clicks to the star ratchets from behind and went for a drive. Yes this improves it but still no auto adjust...

Here's a fun experiment... I drove around and engaged the parking brake a few clicks.

Thinking that if the drums are too far away and won't auto adjust, the parking brake could eat up some of the distance and change pedal feel.

Boy did it. 4-6 clicks and my truck brakes WAY better. Any more and I can feel the drums drag..

So what did I learn? My parking brake works, as is evident by the change in braking. Also, the auto adjusters are not working as they won't bring the pads closer to the drums to improve brake performance.

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how this system works... But am I missing something with the bell cranks? They seem to be working decent, and preload seems ok per the manual. Not sure cranking down on the bell crank adjusters will gain me anything?

What's my next step here? OEM adjusters even tho it's the arm thing that isn't moving or doing anything?

 

OEM adjusters are NLA and aftermarket don’t work. Clean them up best you can.

 

The star adjusters function in both directions but the arm doesn't seem to be moving to adjust it...

Also.. they seem in stock at various locations?

47061-35030 and 47062-35030?