Just curious, why would parking brake pads wear out? Unless you were using it to stop the car, there would be no friction on them at all. My Rolls is almost 25 years old and the parking brake pads are original and still look new.

Who knows, I bought mine used. For All I know the prevoius owner may have liked driving with it on. They are drum style e-brakes and if they are self adjusting, they may just wear over time. That may explain why the cable needs constant tensioning to avoid rattling.

Maybe a tech has a better explanation.

Thickness wasn't too bad Lew, in fact, very little difference in the old vs new pads. The old shoes were glazed and very slick. That, paired with the reversely installed passenger side adjuster, and I couldn't get it to grip the inside hub to hold the car put.

The glazed condition indicates that they may have been dragging for a while and overheated. Maybe because of the improper adjuster installation.

Car got inspected this morning, no problems whatsoever. (Did I tell you recently that I now have 107k on this car? Anyway, I discovered in TX that for rear-wheel cars, the parking brake only needs to hold the car in place in idle, and front-wheel drive cars get a little accelerator to make sure it passes the test.

I am pretty sure my previous pads could have passed if I had figured out the adjuster correctly on the passenger side. Oh well, like I said, only $40 and 4 hours of my time.

It gave you something to do and a story to tell. It does not get any better than that!

how do you get the adjuster plug out to gain access with a screwdriver? my 03xkrs seems to be metal and it looks like it will drop inward easily which i dont think would be good?????

you have a plug in your access hole? I'm not sure what you're trying to describe. Can you shoot a pic and upload?

you probably have the same problem I did deadboy. Someone previously replaced the rotors and didn't pay attention when replacing them. They didn't line up the access hole, so you'll have a hole in the rotor but all you see is steel behind it. Only way to fix is to remove the rotor and reposition it properly. Hope that helps

now that would make sense!

Got to love this forum!


My parking brakes need slight adjustment, so I thought I would do a quick search here to see what's involved before I climb underneath and have to figure the system out. Lo and behold, here it all is with illustrations! pretty simple procedure, I actually expected something a lot more complicated.


Kudos to this forum, it's the best!!! Thanks to all you guys who contribute here.