Pedal Parking Brake

for '60-'66 Chevy/GMC Trucks

Don Campbell of Tucson, Arizona installed this emergency brake system from a '84 shortbed pickup into his '65 C10 Stepside.

There is probably no reason that a unit from a long bed truck wouldn't work equally as nicely on a truck from our era.

He swapped the vent doors from one side of the truck to the other to take care of the clearance problem between the pedal and the door control handle. On some earlier truck this won't be a problem.

This photo shows how the assembly is mounted.

And here's the way Don mounted the release handle. It looks almost factory!

From the front, you can see that that the pedal will go down nicely. The pedal will actually go down and lock the brakes with the door mostly open.

Don routed the cable through the floorboard........

...and then down along the frame welding the brackets from the '84.

More routing along the frame with another '84 bracket, this time bolted to the frame......

...this is the bracket from the '84 where the cable splits off to go to each rear wheel.

Don had to bend the ends of the cables a little more than normal at the backing plates to get them to stay but they hook up to the shoes perfectly.

You may be wondering about the rear sway bar in the picture. It's the front bar from an '87 Toyota Supra (1-1/8") that was cut and rebent to fit. It's been in service for almost three year (as of 4/07) and has performed beautifully. Don says: "Trust me there is no roll to the truck when you hit the curve at the east end of Aviation Parkway at 60mph - yee haw!"