Finally got my parking brake to work!
I took the pedal assembly back out of the truck, replaced the cable and the switch for the dash light as mine was broken. I forgot to document it at the time, but at one point my e brake pedal broke and the teeth got all chewed up on it so it would just skip to the floor and not work at all. I tried to find a replacement pedal but they're not available new so I searched junkyards, and 95-97 Rangers were scarce around me at the time. I did find one junkyard that had a 93, and I had them pull the pedal for me assuming it would be the same... and it wasn't. Why Ford decided to spend the time/money engineering new parking brake pedals in these trucks so often is beyond me.
But anyway, I was able to use the actual foot pedal and ratcheting release mechanism from the 93 pedal on my 97 assembly, with only a few minor modifications needed. I cut all the rivets holding it together to replace the damaged parts, bolted it back together and tack welded the ends as well. I also cut the stopper off that limits the pedal travel so I have a little more travel out of it.
Anyways, after doing some research I found that the front cables are still available to buy from a parts store. The front cables for a 97 are all different lengths based on the wheelbase. According to the measurements, one from an extended cab would probably have been perfect in my case and eliminated the need for the intermediate cable I made. However, the only cable that was readily available was for a regular cab short bed, and it was only about 5-6" shorter than the cable mine originally had. I didn't want to wait about a week to special order one for a long bed or extended cab truck so I just got the short bed one.
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So I installed that back in the truck, and made another slightly longer intermediate cable (good thing I still had leftover cable stops and cable lol). I don't believe my DIY intermediate cable will cause an issue, but if it does at least I know I can probably use an ext cab front cable and eliminate it.
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I went back and adjusted the parking brake shoes one more time - this time in a different way. Before when I adjusted them, I followed the directions in my Chilton's service manual - which was to tighten the adjuster until you can't turn the rotor by hand any more, then back it off 8 clicks. Well, I personally think 8 clicks was too loose because it took a lot of pedal travel to barely get any response from the pedal. What I did instead is adjusted them more like regular drum brakes - tighten them until the rotor can't turn by hand, and then back them off just enough that there's still just very slight interference/drag from the shoes. Now with everything solid - the chevy leaf spring swap bracket no longer flexes under cable tension, all of the cables are new, the shoes are adjusted well, and with my new setup utilizing that Grand Cherokee equalizer bracket - it works well!
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It's hard to picture the incline here, but last time I tested the parking brake in this spot (before bracing that flex-y bracket), it wouldn't hold. But now it held perfect there, the truck was running in neutral in this pic. I even tried letting the clutch out slowly in reverse to see if it could overcome the parking brake easily, but instead it bogged down and didn't budge. Problem solved!