Parking Brake/Rear Drum Adjustment Tips?

Probably 25k miles ago, I replaced my drums, shoes, and all hardware (springs) because they were squeaking and I found a TSB saying the design of the originals caused that.

Ever since, I've questioned the adjustment. Especially since I could hear the passenger side one squeaking pretty much all the time. I suspected I had them too tight and they were rubbing and had glazed over the shoes. I also thought my parking brake didn't hold as well as it probably should have.

Today I pulled them apart, cleaned out all the brake dust with brake cleaner, roughed up the shoes with sandpaper, and reassembled. I backed off the adjustment quite a bit in order to get the drums back on. When I got them back on, I adjusted them so you could just hear rubbing when spinning the drum. Put the wheels back on and braking was markedly worse and the pedal went pretty close to the floor. I also found the emergency brake was even worse than before. The fluid was down a bit (Was adequate with how the drums were before).

I topped off the fluid and adjusted the emergency brake cable to the point where a shallow socket wouldn't grab the nut very well anymore. Before almost no threads were showing.

Everything is about the same as before now (brake pedal feel, stopping power, and parking brake)

I'm not sure if my drums are now correct and the emergency brake was not adjusted correctly, or if they were okay before and I just made them worse and compensated for that by adjusting the emergency brake and adding brake fluid.

Any idea how much of that bolt/rod should be showing on the emergency brake cable adjustment? I think that'd be a good clue as to if I'm right or wrong. I can do disc brakes in my sleep, but drums just aren't as straightforward to me.

Thanks!

 

Hmm, I'm just realizing now that the actual cable adjustment is in the center console. What is the one on the parking brake pedal for, then? And where should that be? I probably shouldn't have messed with that one. The one in the center console may be the answer to my problems. Looks like Toyota spec is 7-10 clicks--mine is way more, goes to the floor.

 

https://www.yotatech.com/f16/adjusting-rear-drum-brakes-easy-way-43741/ http://www.proactivate.com/tundra/brakes.html

 

my e brake pedal came back into the 7-10 click range after adjusting the rear brakes

 

http://www.customtacos.com/tech.old...6toyrm/06toypdf/06rmsrc/rm2006ta/04300110.pdf

 

I think the drums are right at this point. I adjusted the emergency brake in the center console and that helped a lot. There was some slack on the cables for the first few clicks before it even started to pull them and a ton of adjustment on the threaded rod. I still have at least half of the rod left in adjustment.

Braking is not quite as strong in normal stopping (very slight difference, might even be my imagination), but I tried a couple of panic stops and it seemed better than before in those situations. If it was dragging a little too much all the time before, that would make sense.

I figure if nothing else, cleaning the dust out of the drums didn't hurt.