94 Explorer Parking brake WAAAAY too tight

[Cole94]

94 expy, currently getting the pedals in for my M5OD swap, and I needed to drop the parking brake mechanism. In search of a little more slack, I set the brake and put vise grips on the cable underneath at one of the brackets it passes thru, and when I released it I heard a few clicks, and now, with vise grips removed, I get all of 2 clicks out of it before its fully tight. What did I just do? Is there some automatic adjustment that takes up the slack? I am familiar with the adjusters in the drums, but it would seem logical that they would've stayed where they were and parking brake engaged with the grips on the cable. Someone please help...

 

[Cole94]

Bump
After the test drive with the new m5od, its bad.
Violent shaking and extremely touchy brakes.
This isn't a new issue, I've been dealing with it for months. I've removed the auto adjusters a while back and I manually adjust them now, they seem to have tightened themselves since then...
Any ideas?

 

[Roadrunner777]

I'm not a drum brake expert... this is just more of an educated guess! But, I think something has gone wrong in one or both of the drums. Perhaps the parking brake link has fallen into a new position, something is out of place. So, my under-educated advice would be:
1) Look at the parking brake cable from end to end. There's an adjuster somewhere, and a bracket to split the cable action to the two drums. I would first make sure all of that is right, and I suggest this because it was working with the cable that seems to have cause the issue... and it's a pretty quick and easy thing to do. I would look at where you used the vice grips and make sure the cable is not deformed in any way.
2) I would get into the drums and make sure all the components and springs are still where they should be.
3) I, personally, would put that auto-adjusting parts back on, and get back to stock configuration. This is just a gut thing... I don't fully understand the interaction of all the parts in the drums. I just wonder if one of the removed parts causes some unexpected shift in the mechanism.

So, in essence, I am somewhat uselessly advising you to check everything... and I wish I could be more direct and point to the cause immediately. But I think I would do this sooner rather than later because you could be dragging a brake shoe, there could be a part loose in the drum that could unexpectedly cause a brake seizure. I have been waiting for someone with more brake experience to speak up, but these are crazy busy times and I hated to see your problem sit unanswered in some way.

Good Luck!