How To Replace Rear Brakes 1992-99 GMC K1500

Once you have your vehicle raised and supported, we're gonna remove the center cover and the lug nuts behind it. Use your 22-millimeter socket. The next thing you're gonna do is remove your drum. There's a couple of things that you may or may not have to do. One would be, of course, spray the area with some penetrant around the areas of the studs and the center area. There's also gonna be an adjustment that you can relieve on the backside in case your breaks are overadjusted and there's a lip on there. But for this one right here, it kind of just pulls right off. We'll take a peek and make sure you dispose of that brake dust properly.

The next thing we're gonna do is grab onto this spring right here and draw it towards the shoe to get it out of the mounting area. Just carefully try to separate these shoes a little bit. This is moving around. If you wanted to, you can de-adjust this right here to be able to slide this out, but I'm just gonna wait a second. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab onto this, slide that off of there, get a little spring, grab the spring out of there as well. Let's get this piece off of here. There's a little pin that goes straight through the backing plate so we're just gonna kind of push on this, twist it, try to line up the slots on the cap and the pin itself.

I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. So you have your pin. You can see it's got a flat edge. It's got two little hookies on it. Then you've got this right here. It would slide over the pin and then twist and then lock right in. Let's go ahead and get this shoe off of here. We'll get this out of the way, set that aside so we can clean it, fit a little spring down here. Just go ahead and take it out of the shoe. Let's go ahead and get the shoe off of here as well. There we go.

The next thing we're gonna do is grab onto right here with some pliers. I'm gonna use my cutters, but I'm not actually gonna physically cut anything here. I'm just using them for grip. I'm gonna try to get underneath this spring in between the bracket and the spring. Just take a little bit of lubricant, go right around your wheel cylinder, and then the mating points where the shoes are gonna ride against the backing plate. Right here where the pin is gonna be, is gonna be a hotspot for sure. Right down there, and then right here is where the shoot rides as well. Do the same on the other side.

If you didn't buy herself a new adjuster, you need to go ahead and take this apart and clean up the threads. Once you have it nice and cleaned up, we're gonna hit the threaded area with some copper Never-Seez. Now that we get that sprayed, let's go ahead and put the adjuster wheel on there. Make sure you put it in this direction. You're gonna bring it all the way down to the end of the threads. Once you did that, you would put on this little washer right here. You can see that little nub, that's going to face up and towards this. Let's just get it all the way down to the far end. So to get this off, usually I like to try to hold it, and then I'll try to get in between these two ears and just see if I can spread them. The hardest part is spreading them. And then once you get it, we should hopefully be able to slide this right off. Grab this arm. Awesome.

So if you take a look at your shoes, you're gonna notice a very big difference. You have one shoe that's got this little, itty-bitty, like, roll pin that goes through it, and you're also gonna have your other shoe, get this off of here, has this pin. It's important to not mix these up, but something that you are gonna have to do is go ahead and knock this pin out of here and then you'd put it right into your new shoe right there. So just make sure you've got the one that does not have the little pin coming through. Just gonna give this a little bonky. So remember it's gonna come through from this way. Just gonna turn it. Make sure it's completely flush. That looks great. Put it up on there, just double-check. Perfect.

So now we're gonna clean up the E brake lever along the backside, where it's going to right up against the shoe. You don't want it to look like this. You just do it right up to that nub right there. Once you do, take a little bit of this brake lubricant and go ahead and put it on there. That's nice. Right inside that hole, perfect. Take your brand new shoe, the one with the little piton you just put through, go ahead and put it on there and work it in. I can see the grease spreading like it should, perfect. Grab your little clamp, slide it over, grab my pliers. Then I'm gonna squeeze down those ears. Give this another little wiggle, make sure there's no way that that clip can come off and this moves freely.

Now it's gonna be time to push the spring back up the cable. To do that, just use a set of pliers, bring it up to pretty much the edge of where that is. Grab some cutters because that's gonna be the easiest thing to grab onto this line, but you definitely don't want to squeeze to the point you break the cable, of course, we just want it to grab on just like that. I'm gonna hold it. Got this, slide it right on through, release that spring. This can come right up here like that now. It's looking great. Let's grab our pin, our spring, and our cap. Put our pin through facing straight up and down. Got our little clip here. Got the spring on top, just slide this right in.

Just try and get all this stuff all lined up, give it a little twist. Perfect. Just get our long spring in through here. We've got our adjuster here, you've got your wide end and the narrow end. We'll put the wide end through on the side that has the E brake pivot. Now I'm gonna grab our spring, start it into its hole there. At this point, you want to be careful because you don't want to push through your wheel cylinder from one side or the other. So I usually just try to come out at an angle. I'll line this up and pull it through. There we are, rest these where they belong. That looks decent.

Let's get the other pin in here. There we are. Get that spring on there. Let's get this lined up. Now, this little dongle right here, it's gonna go right down near the end and then you've got the hole, that's gonna go over that roll pin. Just get it in. Just put that there. All right. That looks good. Let's get the spring on there. Nice. Let's get our spring on here. It slides right in. Just make sure they're completely in. Perfect. Just give the shoes a couple bonks, that's just gonna help make sure they're situated. If it seems like it's not resting against the backing plate properly, just look right down here. There is a little edge that it could go off the side of, which of course, will make the shoes sit awkwardly and the drum won't go on. This looks perfect.

Now it's time to clean up the mating surface from the axle to the drum. Now that we have this area cleaned up, let's go ahead and hit it with some copper Never-Seez. That looks great. Grab your drum, slide it right on there. As you can tell, at this point, it's super loose. If you want it to, you can adjust it up a little bit to the point where it's at least close. And then, of course, I would start a couple of lug nuts on here and we would continue on from there. What you want to do is take your pry bar and go right in between the wheel cylinder and your adjuster right there and turn that wheel. As you hear it clicking, it's adjusting out. Go ahead and keep trying to put your drum on until the point where it feels like it's fitting on a little snug. So that sounds pretty good right there. We've got a little bit of drag, but I don't actually feel it stopping so that's perfect. We're gonna stay right there for now. At this point, of course, it's a great idea to go ahead and do the same to the other side of your vehicle.

So now it's gonna be time to pump up the brakes. We're gonna pump them up three times, and while holding, I'm going to open up the bleeder screw. Go ahead and pump it. You just want to pay attention to that fluid and make sure you don't see any air bubbles coming out. If you see any air bubbles, you need to make sure you go again. All right, let's pump it again three times. As you can tell, we have a nice, steady stream. This is looking great. I'm just gonna close this off here in a second. Here we are. Go ahead and clean it off. Make sure you hit it with some parts cleaner, get off all that brake fluid, and then, of course, make sure you put your little rubber cover back on there. That's gonna protect the bleeder screw for a long time. That looks great.

All right, let's get the wheel back on here. Start on all of our lug nuts and then we'll snug them up. Let's torque them to manufacturer specifications. Now it's time to torque these lug nuts to 120 foot-pounds. We're gonna go on a crisscross pattern. Torqued. All right, let's take our covers, get those mounted on here. Perfect. So now it's going to be time to check and fill your DOT 3 brake fluid. To do that, you would just grab these little tabs. You can lift right up. Lift up this little rubber, look inside. If you needed to add some, top it off, get it up to where the level says right along the side here. Once you know it's full, make sure you get this rubber back on the cap. Make sure it's nice and secure, wipe down the area, and take it for a road test.