heres my problem. my rear drums on my 01 are very touchy dont think my fronts ever even grab. if im goin down a dirt road in 1st gear and tap the brakes they will lock up in the rear. my parking brake doesnt work either. hope i can get it fixed before the ice comes. any ideas?

Did you look inside the brake fluid reservoir ? How do the pads look up front ? Maybe the proportion valve is bad. You could try to bleed them all out ?

fronts look good. ill try bleeding tommorow. that wouldnt affect my parking brake though right

No.

Gotta ask is it drum rear or disc rear?

He said drum in his first post.

post #1 says drums. you have to go stand in the corner again mikey,how do your brakes work on a paved surface? i would think if i was going down a dirt road i first gear and applied my brakes they might lock up too. with the drag from the engine and being in 1st gear it would seem to me very little pressure on the pedal would lock them. just down shifting mine will break mine loose a little on a dirt or gravel road.

It is scary not having a parking brake with a manual transmission. Last truck was that way for about a week. I fixed it before something bad happened. The emergency brake is probably a totally different issue from the front brakes. It may need to be adjusted, or the cables replaced in order to adjust it properly.I would try a hard stop in an empty parking lot on dry fairly level pavement. If the rear brakes are locking up then, the rear end will try to come around on you and turn you 180 degrees. If that happens your front brakes are needing attention. They provide most of the braking power for the truck (about 75% if memory serves me) so you really need to fix that before you rear end someone, or loose control in a turn, if this is the case.I tend to agree with dripley on the dirt road test. Pickups are light on the rear ends anyway, that big 6 banger under the hood makes the weight offset a whole lot worse on a dirt road than the average truck. Mike travels his share of dirt roads I wonder if he notices this issue?You can come out of the corner now Mike.

He said drum in his first post.

post #1 says drums. you have to go stand in the corner again mikey, how do your brakes work on a paved surface? i would think if i was going down a dirt road i first gear and applied my brakes they might lock up too. with the drag from the engine and being in 1st gear it would seem to me very little pressure on the pedal would lock them. just down shifting mine will break mine loose a little on a dirt or gravel road.

D'Oh! (I'll reclam myself in my post watch! ) Well with drum brakes you need to look at the slack adjusters and adjust up the rear shoes till they lightly drag. Then check the cable slack and see if the cable is too loose. If the cable is hanging loose tighten it slighly to pull up some slack but don't actually adjust it so far that it pulling the parking brakes on the drum. Hence why I suggest to adjust the shoe up first before adjusting the cable this prevents you from using the cable adjustment as a parking brake adjustment.

awesome guys. gonna get started on it pretty soon. thanks for all the info

Well all this talk about disc or drum brakes begs the question, when exactly did they put discs on the rear. My 2002 has discs, his 2001 has drums so obviously they started in 2002, but when Mike asked which brakes it had I thought maybe they started the discs with the late 2001 models.Anyone know?

Well all this talk about disc or drum brakes begs the question, when exactly did they put discs on the rear. My 2002 has discs, his 2001 has drums so obviously they started in 2002, but when Mike asked which brakes it had I thought maybe they started the discs with the late 2001 models. Anyone know?

2001.5 Yes a serious answer

The door tag on mine says april 01 and it has 4wdb.

Well with drum brakes you need to look at the slack adjusters and adjust up the rear shoes till they lightly drag. Then check the cable slack and see if the cable is too loose. If the cable is hanging loose tighten it slighly to pull up some slack but don't actually adjust it so far that it pulling the parking brakes on the drum.

Someone able to describe this never done much with brakes - and want to look at my rear drums a little as seem to not be doing any breaking ........ want to see if they need adjusting or replacement etc ....