my lights were coming on and I had to pump the petal to stop, and it turns out my rear shoes needed adjustment. works great now, but that leads to me wondering if my front brakes are even doing anything? how much % goes to the front/rear? seems like if my rears had a lot of play that the fronts should have been doing most of the stopping, any thoughts?

 

What probably happened is that the automatic adjusters in the rear froze up and once the pads wore down, they weren't as effective. It's pretty common. One thing you can do to help the rear brakes is install the GM rear cylinders out of a 1 ton. Do a search on here. It's like $15/cylinder and makes a noticeable difference in stopping. It's a straight forward bolt in job. Nothing fancy at all.

 

If I'm not mistaken, it think it's 70% front and 30% rear. My brother had a lot of problems on his '01 with his front calipers. He had a collapsed hose on one and the other was froze. I've heard it's not uncommon for the front calipers to screw up. Good luck

Eric

 

I already did the GM cylinder upgrade in the rears, and my brake lines are stainless braided lines. also my front axle has been changed to a 95 Ford F350 axle which has dual piston front calipers. I felt my front disks today and they were nice and hot after driving. however if I slam on my brakes the rears lock up and the fronts just roll, in the rain its real easy to lock up the rears first

 

Sounds like with the new (to the truck) breaks on the front you may need to get a ajustable proportioning valve. The fronts should be doing most of the work. But if you have that load link that ajusted your breaks on the size of the load removed your rears would lock up first if you are empty I would think.

 

my truck never had the load link thing in the rear either.

 

Yeah, the '95s didn't come with the load link.
Think what you need to do is just except the fact that the self adjusters on these trucks are trash and get into the habit of adjusting them manually.
I do mine at every oil change and have gotten as many as 30 clicks on the star wheel till they were adjusted right.

 

do your front pads wear the same as the rear shoes? or whats a good ratio for pad replacemet to shoe replacements?

 

Hard to say for me. Replaced the fronts three times and the rears look hardly worn with 250k on them. At the current rate probably ten to one.