At 15 years and 180k miles I figure my truck is just about middle age now. I bought it used at 6 years with only 24k miles on the clock. While easy miles rate wise its first 8 years were spent in snow and salt winters. Since then I've been winterizing my RV by parking by a palm tree, catus, or both.
Before hitting the road in 2011. Moreover, before saying goodbye to my garage and work shop. My truck got a good once over, including new front brakes. At the time I noticed that the parking brake mechanism was seized from rust. But local auto parts stores at the time couldn't seem to get the parts needed to fix it. I rarely used the parking brake anyway. So time passed.
A couple summers ago I noticed a minor problem developing. There was intermittent vibration like a wheel out of balance. At first I thought my recent new tires weren't holding balance. So I had them rebalanced. Fortunately, Sam's Club includes free lifetime balance as well as rotation so that wasn't a big deal. But it didn't really fix the problem. At the time I couldn't tell for sure either way because the vibration was intermittent.
Before leaving MS last spring my brakes started acting up. I started getting chatter when braking like a rotor was warped. Except that too was intermittent. With a warped rotor you'd expect pulsing all the time not randomly. Fortunately I had access to a shop so I did another brake job. By this time the odometer was up to 143k miles, which didn't seem unreasonable. Especially since I'm towing a trailer more miles than not.
In fact I expected the rear brakes, which were still original, may need replacing this time. But no. They were still showing very little wear. I new that was a clue but didn't give it the weight at the time I should've. As they say hindsight is 20/20, eh.
What was more apparent was that one front brake pad was badly worn and cracked. They were ceramic pads with lifetime warranty so I replaced them. The previous time I had the discs turned so I couldn't play card again. Time for new rotors as well. The brakes worked well again but the pedal felt spongy. I figured the master cylinder could be due or just air in the lines.
Fortunately, I asked the right guy to help bleed the lines. Brad was a former Mr. Good Wrench. So of course he had sets of flange wrenches in both SAE and metric sizes in his garage. When we failed to burp out any air he connected some dots for me. He asked about parking brakes and I explained that I didn't use them. Especially because the mechanism froze up and I hadn't found replacement parts yet. Then he enlightened me.
While it seemed like a low priority at the time, Brad explained that my rear brake shoes needed the parking brakes set and released periodically. That actuates the ratchet mechanism. Which keeps the shoes expanded to take up slack as they wear. No worries. I recalled manually snugging them in 2011 and did so again in 2016. Wala! Pedal sponginess mostly vanished. What I didn't fully appreciate at the time was how much more evenly the truck braked. The rear end didn't sink down after releasing the brake pedal after stopping hard sometimes. Hm
Fast forward to last month. While headed for UT red canyons to explore and hike (CO was mostly still below freezing) guess what? Yep, my brakes started acting up again. Meanwhile, the odometer had snuck up to 173k on me. Where did those last 30k miles go since I manually dialed out the rear shoes? Obviously the front brakes were going again. Reluctantly, I had a brake shop take a look and confirm my suspicions. While reassuring that my understanding was correct I was equally annoyed with myself for being negligent.
But I was also annoyed with how the shop handled the situation. The salesman wanted to sell me a whole front end rebuild. Understandable, but that would only be a temporary solution. Without rear auto-adjustment the front brakes would wear out prematurely. Again! With considerable effort I got him to see that fixing the parking brake, so the rear shoes would stay adjusted, was root cause. But he was unable to source those parts in a reasonable amount of time. Also, their parts brand would neuter my lifetime warranty. So I declined letting them do the work.
It's not just the cost. Sure they wanted a pretty penny for the job. And I'm sure they'd've done fine work so far as it went. But it didn't go far enough for starters. If I'm paying a premium for anything then it darned well better be worth the cost. Which in this case, to me, it clearly wasn't. Or, maybe I'm just morally opposed to outsourcing anything I can do myself. Meh
Passing through Alamosa CO a few days later, I got lucky. AutoZone there was not only able to find my parking brake mechanism, they overnighted it on the next morning's delivery truck. Woot! So I also bought enough parts to rebuild the front brakes and headed south. Farmington NM offered the right weather and the support of Home Depot, Lowes, AutoZone, Sears and Harbor Freight - all close together. The friendly manager of Home Depot was sympathetic to my story and let me overnight in their parking lot. Then use it for work space the following day. I really like stores that are traveler friendly!
Replacing the parking brake mechanism went smoothly. The one side was very badly corroded. With the parking brakes fixed two right things followed. The brake pedal go firmer (less spongy) and the truck braked more evenly. Fixing the front brakes was another matter. One caliper was sticking so the inside pad (the side you can't see without removing the wheel AND caliper) had been dragging. That explained both intermittent vibration and premature wear of that brake pad. Unfortunately, I couldn't budge the caliper bolts with hand tools.
Fortunately, I have good taste and collect very good friends in my travels. My buddy John down in Mesa AZ let me drop in to use his shop. He also helped break loose the stubborn bolts. It's also near impossible for one to bleed one's brakes alone. So after replacing the offending caliper we got the lines burped and the truck back in business.
It's still not done. I wasn't convinced the rotors were warped. They were quite smooth. So I replaced the front pads but didn't even turn the rotors. I know, I know. Some may shake their heads or call me ugly names but I knowingly own this experiment. It sounded pretty bad a first. Not unlike the tell-tale metal on metal sound of worn out brake pads tearing up rotors. Except here the new ceramic pads were cleaning up the old rotors during use. It sounds better now after a couple thousand miles. But it's a little annoying. And still not right. So I'll probably conclude the experiment soon with new rotors and fresh pads.
I'm very pleased with AutoZone. They've been true to their lifetime warranty by replacing two sets of pads already. They agreed the sticking caliper, also lifetime warranted, caused pad failure. The rotors aren't lifetime, just two year warranty. I may try having them turned to see if they'll clean up. But I'm okay just starting over with virgin discs for the next chapter.
I'm also fine paying for new pads. There was a time in my less honest youth I'd've been tempted to try weaseling a third set of free pads under the lifetime warranty. Fortunately, with age comes wisdom to recognize what's right, and not abuse such policies. The value proposition of a couple hundred bucks to restore full confidence in my truck's ability to stop correctly is a no brainer. I'll brake even.
