Replacing Parking Brake Shoes - 95 vs 96
- Nathan Price
- Feb 17
- 3 min read
After years of having the parking pedal on my '95 and '96 Crown Vic go straight to the floor and still not hold my car in place, I decided it was finally time to replace the parking brake shoes. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty behind those rotors. Sure enough, after 30 years of use, they were rusty and falling apart. One parking shoe even had the pad completely separated from the bracket. It felt so gratifying to pull off the rusty, rickety hardware and shoes, run a wire brush across everything, and give it a fresh coat of paint. Looking practically brand new, I was ready to install new parking brake shoes and hardware. Even though I had never tackled this job before and was definitely a novice, I was ready for the thrill of a new challenge.
What surprised me was the big difference the hardware on the '95 compared to the '96 which made the installation a challenge for this newbie. Which was easiest to install? The '96 by a landslide. Ford engineers vastly improved the ease of installation from one year to the next. It took me multiple days to figure out how to install the '95 parking shoes versus the '96, which took me just one day.
There were two things that kept stumping me with the '95, and they both centered on the two lower springs. First, the coil on the bottom springs is long and tight. It runs from one end of the spring to the other, making it virtually impossible to spread apart. When I tried pulling or prying them across from one parking brake shoe to the other, the hooks on either end kept straightening out under the pressure. UGHHHH! I had to buy two sets of brake shoe hardware from AutoZone because I kept bending them. I borrowed two spring pliers from friends, but those didn't work. They dug into the brake pad, leaving indentations and didn't keep the spring close enough to the shoe to hook it into the notch. I searched all over online for a solution. I even posted my dilemma on the Crown Victoria Discord site but didn't get a response. I tried ChatGPT a few times, but all its suggestions didn't get me closer to a solution. Finally, in complete desperation, I knelt down and offered a prayer to God. It was the only option I had left (really, I should have asked earlier). I kid you not that, after that prayer, I had the thought to use a flathead screwdriver as a lever. Pop. The hook was in place.
Second, the '95 has a spring behind the parking brake shoe. It took me hours to figure out how to install that spring. There is no way to install it with the parking brake shoe in place. The only way I figured out was installing the spring before putting them in place, turning them upside down, sliding the spring up into place, twisting the parking brake shoes upright, and spreading the shoes apart with a flathead screwdriver as a lever until they rested in the right place. It was a bear of a job!
I can picture the mechanic in charge of maintaining the Crown Vic Police Interceptors for the New York Police Department called Ford directly to complain about the '95 parking brake shoe. They listened. The '96 installation is a thousand times easier. The '96 parking brake shoes have no springs behind the shoe. I repeat. No spring behind it. Phew! That saved me 1 to 3 hours of work. Thank you! In addition, the bottom spring has a shorter coil, so it's easier to pull across from one side to the other side. You don't have to fight with a coil that is twice as long. With those two problems eliminated, it's a piece of cake in comparison.
Overall, I learned a ton about installing parking brake shoes and feel I advanced from novice to intermediate installer. And now, it feels so satisfying to press down on that brake pedal and feel it stop before it hits the floor. They even hold my car right in place. And, that's why I love working on these cars. The gratification of a job well done completely outweighs all the frustration along the way. Plus, I have 30 more years until I have to do it again, and that thankfully seems quite a way off!
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