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WJ Parking Brake Shoes - Beware

11K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  99wjtx 
#1 · (Edited)
If you're having a problem getting your WJ parking brake to hold and "you've tried everything!" consider that, apparently, the off-the-shelf shoes used for the WJ parking brake can vary enough among manufacturers to matter. Sometimes it isn't obvious when looking at pictures but make sure you choose shoes that have abrasive material which extends to within about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch from the ends of the shoe and *especially* from the end that contacts the lever/actuator. From looking at old shoes this is the spot where most of the wear occurs. Some shoes omit material in that area. Those are likely built to an older, pre-Chrysler specification which apparently changed at some point, probably at the behest of Daimler-Chrysler themselves. Thickness varies too but the most important thing seems to be that the material extends toward both ends of the shoe as far as possible.

To be clear, some application guides for certain brands WILL point to shoes that won't work well or at all. Genuine OEM shoes (if you can find them) are obviously good, as are Crown (confirmed) and possibly Omix-Ada.
 
#2 ·
You probably make a good point the parking brake shoe material should cover as much as the shoe metal face/surface as possible.

Curious what "application guides" you're talking about when you mention this, "To be clear, some application guides for certain brands WILL point to shoes that won't work well or at all."?

I'd remove Omix-ADA from your list of shoes which probably work well. They manufacture nothing of the own, just relabel other brand parts with their own name, then sell them for 2x+ the cost.

The Wagner PAB807 parking brake shoes seem to work pretty well on my 04. But it's stock, no lift or large tires, and I don't go through a safety inspection like in the thread below.

With as much problems members have here with their parking brakes it seems like the WJ parking brake system has a lot to be desired.

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f310/getting-more-bite-parking-brake-4103337/
 
#3 ·
If you go to the world's largest online retailer and look up parking brake shoes for your WJ, you'll get several choices from several manufacturers. That's an application guide that recommends shoes that I couldn't make work for the reasons stated. The world's largest online auction site does the same thing, as did the auto parts seller with the word "rock" in its name. I couldn't get Raybestos SG shoes to work nor could I get a "new old stock" set of Bendix shoes to work, again for the reasons stated, and looking at some pictures of other shoes from other manufacturers, they also appear to have less abrasive material coverage. The Omix Ada shoes look just like the Crown and I got the Crown to work (mostly).
 
#4 ·
I couldn't find another thread that really discussed this aspect of the problem but I came across one thread where someone "tried everything" and then tried some Mopar OE shoes and they finally got the brake to hold, I guess good enough to pass inspection. Here's what I think happened and I'm only speculating. Daimler-Chrysler selected an "off the shelf" shoe for the WJ or they had a manufacturer design what would become FMSI 1544-S807. Either way, that "spec" was adopted by a number aftermarket manufacturers, and especially after the WJ began to roll. At some point later on as the WJ parking brake problem became obvious, DM went back to their supplier and had them extend the abrasive material farther toward the ends of the shoe. Some aftermarket suppliers never seem to have adopted the change.

The lever doesn't seem to actuate the shoes outward uniformly but instead more forcefully toward the lever end of the shoe. Having the extra material there seems to be the difference.

http://www.yoyopart.com/oem/302895/fmsi-1544s807.html#application
 
#5 ·
Some good info. Before I made my post yesterday I went into Rockauto and looked at a bunch of the parking brake shoe photos on different brands. In zooming in on the photos I see what you're talking about where some of the metal shoes had the material further up/down towards the ends. And saw that too on the Mopar parking brake shoes they sell.

I'd be interested to see if there's a shoe material length difference between the Mopar 5011988AA original part number vs the Mopar 501988AB which is a newer part number?

It seems like many of the aftermarket brake shoe manufactures have moved their manufacturing operations to overseas in Asia. Have also seen the quality on many shoes going down. While the metal parts of the shoes are all bent/welded by machine believe the human factor comes into play when gluing the shoe material on.

While I said the Wagner PAB807 shoes work for me I couldn't believe the shoddy workmanship on gluing one of the shoe materials on. They couldn't even glue it on straight and I had to file about 1/16" off the edge corners so it wouldn't stick out past the metal. That's Federal-Mogul for you since many of their other products by companies they own have suffered from poor quality control.

Agree, the equalizer/lever system at the top of the shoes doesn't push the shoe face out evenly. Also you also best make sure the 6 raised metal tabs on the dust shield the shoe metal rides on are sanded off clean with a little lube on them. I've seen these rusted-up tabs cause the shoes to hang up while not letting shoes slide on them like they should.

The WJ parking brake system seems to be an improvement over the ZJ (93-98) ebrake. In the salt/rust belt the cam/lever system seizes up completely on the ZJ's (see below thread) while haven't seen this happen on the WJ's equalizer/lever system. But on the other hand haven't seen as many complaints of the ZJ parking brake not holding as much as problems with the WJ.

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f13/ebrake-cam-lever-replacement-write-up-1605033/

Sorry for going off on a tangent in your thread. But point well taken the longer the shoe material on the shoe itself the better stopping/holding power you'll have.
 
#6 ·
I burned up a rear rotor by having the parking brake adjusted too tight. Following the FSM it tells you to measure the inside of the rotor hat and set the parking brake shoes .015" under that measurement. You're supposed to measure diagonally (from where the shoes first contact the rotor so top of one to bottom of the other.) After I burned the rotor up I set the measurement to .020" and the parking brakes holds just fine like it should. More than likely its an issue with the lining thickness like you said. I used Centric shoes since I was pleased with their brake pads. As for replacing the rotor the E-coat was burned off so I junked the rotor, it was likely still fine but I got the coated ones for a reason.
 
#7 ·
The set of NOS Bendix shoes I got had the abrasive material "glued" on crooked on two of the shoes. One was off the side of the shoe by what looked like a full 1/16" of an inch. I brought it to the attention of Bendix and they said the shoes I bought were manufactured when Bendix was still owned by Allied Signal (over 15 years ago).
 
#8 ·
The idea that Bendix is different pre/post Honeywell is kinda funny... yes, AlliedSignal and Honeywell merged, but it was AS buying Honeywell and rebranding itself with the newly purchased name. Headquarters stayed in NJ and everything.

18 years is a lot of time for things to change, so they may well have improved things, but it wasn't because they started printing "Honeywell" instead of "AlliedSignal" on the box!
 
#9 ·
Another thing to look at is the cable adjustment. If both sides are not tensioned equally at the e-brake, a loss of effectiveness can occur. Also, check the cable under the rear seat where it divides to the left and right side and make sure it's equal. Sometimes re-tensioning the hand brake lever is necessary as well. It's not a very stout system so needs set fairly precisely.
 
#10 ·
I found this discussion AFTER suffering the pain of repeated attempts to solve this issue in my 2000 WJ. My parking brake has not worked since replacing all the hardware following a rear axle seal failure/repair. The original parking brake shoes still held despite axle oil contamination but replacement of the original 16 year old hardware was the right and easier thing to do while the axle shafts were out of the way. All replacement hardware was Raybestos Professional Grade, purchased via Amazon. Letters and phone calls with Raybestos Customer Service and Product Support personnel (after discovery of failure-to-hold) yielded no satisfaction. Here's the last message I wrote to their customer service supervisor (her hands tied by corporate red-tape but a pleasant person to work with nonetheless)...

Dear Lorraine,

Thank you for your help!

Sadly, it seems there's nothing to be gained aside from a hard lesson learned. Shame on me for not raising the issue sooner. What was once my "go to" brand has apparently become less than the quality product I once knew. I will rebuild my rear brake assemblies using parts from another source and, rather than risk similar fitment issues, will re-sell or discard the (still new, unused) Raybestos hardware that I purchased to rebuild my front brakes in favor of another brand.

This begs two questions for your company quality control group and they are - Do you react-to and make corrections from your own lessons learned? What will you do to make sure this kind of thing does not happen again?

Disappointed
 
#12 ·
I found this discussion AFTER suffering the pain of repeated attempts to solve this issue in my 2000 WJ. My parking brake has not worked since replacing all the hardware following a rear axle seal failure/repair. The original parking brake shoes still held despite axle oil contamination but replacement of the original 16 year old hardware was the right and easier thing to do while the axle shafts were out of the way. All replacement hardware was Raybestos Professional Grade, purchased via Amazon. Letters and phone calls with Raybestos Customer Service and Product Support personnel (after discovery of failure-to-hold) yielded no satisfaction. Here's the last message I wrote to their customer service supervisor (her hands tied by corporate red-tape but a pleasant person to work with nonetheless)...

Dear Lorraine,

Thank you for your help!

Sadly, it seems there's nothing to be gained aside from a hard lesson learned. Shame on me for not raising the issue sooner. What was once my "go to" brand has apparently become less than the quality product I once knew. I will rebuild my rear brake assemblies using parts from another source and, rather than risk similar fitment issues, will re-sell or discard the (still new, unused) Raybestos hardware that I purchased to rebuild my front brakes in favor of another brand.

This begs two questions for your company quality control group and they are - Do you react-to and make corrections from your own lessons learned? What will you do to make sure this kind of thing does not happen again?

Disappointed
I want to retract every bad thing I said about Raybestos. My email resulted in a series of communications that yielded more than just my own satisfaction. Further communications transpired today with a number of top-notch people, including Raybestos own VP Quality Engineering, who called me while on his vacation! They (we) discovered a material defect/out-of-tolerance condition caused by a vendor of a sub-component which affected more than an entire lot of Raybestos 807PG brake shoes. Apparently the vendor of the metal shoe frames had cut-away too much metal from the seat area where the brake actuator meets and pushes the shoe out to the drum, resulting in insufficient shoe travel despite maximum star-wheel adjustment. Luckily I kept my communications technical and on-point without trashing the fine folks at a great american brake component manufacturer. New corrected and doubly-verified replacement shoes and top-hat rotors are in-transit as I write.
 
#11 ·
Sad to say, but most huge corporations don't care at all about stuff like this. They have become so huge, spread out, disjointed and self absorbed for the little stuff to ever show up on some bigwigs spreadsheet. If it doesn't affect someones bonus check, it simply doesn't matter to them. :(
 
#13 ·
I forgot to say that they are shipping all that free hardware (professional grade 807PG shoes and two 76794PG tophats) to me even though they know I installed the hardware a year ago. Apparently the described issue was that old (at-least) and there were some "escapes" from their process that still found their way from dusty warehouse shelves to unsuspecting folks like you and me. Cheers to their American pride.
 
#15 ·
Park Brakes passed inspection

Received new replacement hardware (807 shoes and 76794 top-hat rotors) from Raybestos on Saturday, installed this morning (rainy Wednesday) and passed MA inspection this afternoon. Even with new hardware properly adjusted she began to roll at ~1250RPM. I was wrong about the 1500RPM requirement. The Massatwo****s parking/emergency brake requirement actually states that the brake must hold up-to something between 1200RPM-1300RPM and/or must stop the vehicle from 20MPH within 80 feet so I guess you could say we nailed it!

Two images attached. One is a comparo that shows the different actuator pocket depths between old (right ~0.5") vs. new (left ~0.25") Raybestos 807PG park brake shoes. The other image is with hardware installed including new actuators (replacing them was unnecessary) to demonstrate that a gap should be present at the bump-stops when assembly with corrected shoes is completed.
 

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