1985 S10 Pickup Brakes

[port48]

Started day replacing rear pads (drum) on a friend's 1985 S10 (40K miles but set in grandfather's yard several years un-loved).

Ended up replacing both rear wheel cylinders and master cylinder (turns out the truck does not have power brakes - i.e, no booster).

Bled brakes but the pedal is "soft", taking too much travel to slow/stop the truck.

Can anyone share the brake adjustment and bleeding procedure for this vehicle please?

I did not adjust the "star" wheel on the rear brakes. I presumed backing up and stopping would result in self-adjust (works on my '64 Chevelle SS ). I'm guessing that would be a good place to start. Is the procedure to adjust the star until the pads stop the drum from turning and then back off until you can spin the drum? I read somewhere else that actuating the parking brake would "self" adjust the brakes.

Bleeding procedure I did: Bench bled the master cylinder. Re-bled after installation by pumping pedal and cracking the fwd and rear lines. Bled (filled reservoir, helper pumped brakes, I opened fittings and fluid ran thru attached hose into container) front left, front right, rear left, rear right. Ran about 1.5 qts (including what's currently residing in the reservoir) thru the system

Are there additional places for air to hide, such as bias/proportioning valve? I noticed such a valve located under & outboard of the master cylinder. Also, there's a "cross over" tee mounted to the top of the rear axle.

Thanks for any help.

Wm

[OverBoardProject]

I would imagine that you got most, if not all the air out of the system, and it sounds like you know what you are doing.

I would imagine that the back brakes still need adjusting, and the self adjusters might not work.

I usually jack up the back end, block it, take the wheel's off, then I adjust them until there is some resistance.

Then I pump the brakes, and repeat everything over, and over again, until everything is tight... Then I back the adjusters off just until the brakes stop draging.

This procedure seems to work really well for me, and doesn't seem to take all that long.

[port48]

Thank you for your prompt response.

Today I adjusted the "star" wheel, moving the pads closer to the drum. That took up almost all of the extra pedal travel that I experienced yesterday. I should've adjusted it yesterday. Oh, well.

As for more bleeding, I learned that one indicator of entrained air was that if you pumped the brake pedal and it moved closer to your foot with each pump then you probably have air in the system. I don't experience that when I pump the pedal. That, and the owner says the brakes are much improved over when we started working on the pad replacement yesterday, leads me to believe the job is successful.

Thanks for reading.

Wm

[OverBoardProject]

I'm glad that it worked out