Hey all, so its been a month since i installed brand new front brake pads, and a few weeks since i upgraded to 33" kumho mt's. ever since the tires installation my brakes have been acting funky, sometimes on a hard (or not so hard) brake ill lose pedal pressure and get it back real fast, havent lost any fluid whatsoever, it hasnt really been bad till tonight on my way home from class. pulling off the highway to turn onto my back road i start applying pressure to the brake pedal, the more i press on it the louder this noise becomes from the back of the truck, sounds like a nasty scraping kind of noise, now that i think about it that could have been the rear drums but im not sure, also the pedal starts going wacko, the truck lurches forward several times as i lose pressure and gain it back very quickly, the truck itself is shaking, at this point im freaking out, so i get slowed down enough with the parking brake and pull off the side of the road and have my dad bring a trailer and thats where she sits right now.
Has anyone ever experienced this? Any advice on what to check... Or do for that matter lol?

 

take the drum's apart? maybe replace the internals, especially if you find pieces and parts laying inside.

 

Ya thats what awesome fun-ness i have planned for tomorrow, take the dratted brake system apart and find out what the heck happened, im leaning toward the expensive side tho :(

 

I was gonna say look into your MC but if you aren't losing fluid, and you hear a wierd noise from the back. I would check the drums first, and go from there for sure.

 

Might also want to re-bleed the brakes. How spongy is your brake pedal normally? you may have air in the brake lines.

 

Ya i think thats where ill start, hopefully if it comes to it i can just replace the drums themselves and fix it, if the lines and abs arent messed up too
Ya i will for sure, i did it once when i put the new pads on, but for all i know there could be air. Usually the pedal isnt very spongy at all, pretty firm and responsive normally. Its weird tho it started acting funny as soon as the bigger tires were installed.

 

Ok so i took the drums off tonight and sure enough, the driver side linings are completely missing except for little fragments, the passenger side shoes arestill there but the adjustor wAs froze up, so no telling how long i havent had right reAr brakes lol, replacingthe shoes and adjustors tomorrow so hopefully that was the only problem

 

Make sure your wheel cylinder is still good too.

 

FYI, the parking brake is the rear drums. So if there is an issue with them using the parking bake is not a real good idea.

This pedal pressure issue sounds to me as the booster has a tear in it.

 

Good to see that you found the problem.

Obviously, brakes are super important.

 

Nah, they ain't all too important. Just run into stuff.

 

And inspect/replace if needed, the inexpensive rubber brake line located by the pumpkin..

 

UPDATE: Ok guys I think Im good to go for now (hope im not speaking too soon) Took the old shoes and linings and wheel cylinders off of both sides, replaced them all on both sides, put it all back together, bled the brake system and everything seems to be working now, the brake pedal is acting ok now, no varying pressure, so hopefully it stays that way, and if not then my next step (i guess) would probably be re-programming the pcm to allow for the bigger sized tires so that the abs wheel speed sensors don't think that i'm constantly sliding out of control everytime i press the brakes (my initial theory before taking the drums apart.)
So thanks all for the advice and recommendations!

 

I myself don't link drum brakes and wish Ford had gone with disc at all four corners. There are a lot of small vehicles out there that have 4 disc brakes and I think this would be nice on the Ranger.

 

Ford agreed that's why the 2011 has 4 wheel disc.

 

i just took my drums off threw them in the grabadge and put on mustang discs in the back and im in love

 

I think it had more to do with stability control and the law making it required.

 

I didn't know that, that's cool.

 

Is this a difficult conversion and, is it costly?

 

"and the law making it required" What do you mean?

 

difficult not at all if you can change your front brakes you can do the rear. search the conversition on here for the walk through. and costley it can be if you do cobra and not just gt . look in to it

 

Stability control is a federal requirement, drums just don't provide the control needed for a system like that to work. So Ford upgraded the brakes for that law, not because they wanted too

 

This is something I'll have to look into to see how much of an improvement in the handling of the truck I can expect to see.