have you tried bleeding the system? maybe you got air in the lines when backing the caliper pistons back in? can happen if you turn em in too fast, or leave the master cylinder cap on, this will create a soft spot in the pedal when first applied.

funny about the wd-40 I was backing out of the driveway with my wife one day in her escape and the brakes squeaked. she said oh no id that bad? I said no the brakes just need oiled, she said oh is that something you can do or should i take it in to have it done? i died laughing. in her defense she had no idea.

 

Which also doesn't apply in this situation. Adjusting the SLACK in the cable would affect how well the parking brake grabs, yes I'm aware the parking brake is the rear calipers, but it's activated by the cable and NOT the hydraulics which is what is in question here since he's having PEDAL feel issues, not a sloppy parking brake HANDLE.

My advice, flush the brake fluid out, put in new stuff and bleed it good.

Should make a huge difference.

 

I felt just a slight bit of slack a month or 2 ago but it just went away after a while. It was small enough that it was definatly one of those things where only someone who drives it all the time and is totally tuned into the car would notice.

As for that WD40 make sure to get it all over your rotors. It will help alot. You also might want to try some on your steering wheel and brake pedals. And for extra performance, you should soak your tires in WD40. You will grip so much better.

 

The adjuster in each caliper is for brake pad wear. The adjuster for the parking brake cable is for the brake cables stretching.
I agree that bleeding/fluid flush will probably give him his pedal feel back.

 

Not really, no. If that was the case the front calipers would have the same setup for adjusting brake pad wear, and as I'm sure you are aware, they don't.

The only reason the rear calipers have that is because the brake pads themselves are also used as the parking brakes. There are 2 different methods of applying rear brake pressure. The pedal, and the parking brake. The pedal provides hydraulic pressure to the piston causing it to push out and rotate due, the parking brake mechanism uses cable tension to move a lever which in turn rotates the piston of the caliper causing it to push out.

The piston cant come out without rotating, and it also can't rotate without coming out.

Every car out there that has rear discs that use the calipers as the parking brake pretty much uses a version of this method, it's effective, and really simplistic. Some other cars with rear discs have a parking brake setup very similar to drum brakes that goes inside the hub of the rotor. Not a very effective setup, but cheap to implement, and a pain in the *** to maintain. A lot of your GM cars use this type of setup.

 

I get what your saying and I like the picture.
My previous car had 4 wheel discs like the Mustang, if I didn't use the parking brake for a long time it would take about 3 pumps on the parking brake pedal for it to hold the car on a hill. Now after doing that it would only take 1 pump for the parking brake to hold the car after the parking brake was released and used again. Thats why I thought there was an adjuster in the rear calipers.

 

Nope, no adjuster at all. The reason you had to "pump" the parking brake a bit to get it to grab if you hadn't used it in a while is because the spring mechanism that causes the piston to rotate wasn't engaging fully due to it sticking a bit. Once you used it a few times, you freed it up and it was able to fully engage and be effective again.

The adjuster for the parking brake on these cars for cable slack is actually in the center console, pull open the access panel, tighten up a nut to get rid of the slack.

I wasn't trying to be a dick earlier, just providing some uh, education?