If you have shoe brakes in the rear, check out the self adjusters therein. These may be jammed and need to be cleaned and lubricated. After freeing up and cleaning the adjusters, re-assemble the drums and ajust the shoe brakes. Then check the fluid resevoir on the master cylinder and top off if needed. After the first application of the brakes, the shoe brakes may not be returing fully and the next time you apply the brakes, all seems well. But, with road shocks, the shoes may drift all the way back to their stops and then it will take extra pedal movement to push them against the drums. Also, you may have a parking brake cable that is draging in its housing. It should be free to slide. If not, replace. While you are into the brakes, inspect the return springs. if these are in bad shape, replace.

Explorer owners, Good day! First of all i would like to state my apology in putting up this thread. Just badly need help with the brake lights of my car and i hope you understand. Feel free to remove this one in case you think this is an inappropriate post. So, I recently bought a used 2000 Explorer XLS and the one brake light was not working and the other one was intermittently working. I replaced both brake lamps and still had the same problem.I replaced both brake lamps and still had the same problem. Upon close inspection of the lamp sockets, I discovered that theyboth showed signs of overheating. I replaced both brake lamp sockets with an aftermarket product called Conduct-Tite lampsocket found off the shelf the shop here in our place. The part number is 84764. This part number is for Ford trucks from 1997 and newer. The part is American made by Motormite, Division of R&B, Inc., Colmar, PA 18915. The price was $7.95 for each socket. This fixed my problem. The counter man also recommended that I use a heat transfer silicon type salve smeared on the base of the replacement brake lamps, which I bought. Related post: Ford Repair

Geokid, It's hard to know how you will use space, especially with preteen kids. In re family, my DH and I are the youngest in our families and our kids are the youngest kids, by far. So it isn't like we will have a gaggle of cousins; they are all adults. The Maine house is very close to my DH's Mass. family (which may mean they day trip it), and quite far from my Phila.-area family (which may mean they rarely come). DH feels strongly we should add 2 BA because we can and because o/w there is a space that will probably be underutilized. I get it, but I also hate that feeling that every time we undertake these things we keep gilding the lily... Chispa -- I don't think I want 16 people, LOL! PrairieMom, I get it, but I think that building now for that possible eventuality doesn't make sense. It makes sense to do it when you are! I mean put in a BA and wait 20 years, LOL? Plus I have no idea if this is a forever second home or our "beachhouse" fad. Annie, My GC does not draw out parts of the plan that aren't being changed, so what it doesn't show is 1) a closet that mirrors the utility closet on the other side and 2)a chimney chase between the two windows. So, its best to ignore that room, sorry! As far as the sink in the Boys bath being close to the door, that is a plug. I made the shower stall as big as I could to still get the swing for the shower door and the entry door. The shower could easily be smaller, or the sink, or the door swing could change or be a pocket, etc etc. At that point we are down to inches and so it is false precision; it has to wait until my GC opines. I'd rather the toilet where it is then have the shower stall stare at the toilet. In the girls room, there is already a long walk in closet. In my lakehouse experiencs, we had many (all empty) closets. Everything we wore was in drawers or on hooks. I provide some rudimentary hanging space but for a vacation home, more is overkill. As for putting dressers on the other walls, this plan is very deceiving because it does not show ceiling height. The ceiling will be too low there for furniture. PPBenn, DH has pointed out that where I would put my toilet is very nearly where the toilet is in our MBA, vis a vis the outside wall. That MBA is gutted and no one has said we need to move the toilet. plus its been there 100 years. The linen closets are roughly sized to fit the available space. Thanks, again everyone. At this point I have sent it to my GC to see if there is something very important I am missing. Until I hear back, it probably doesn't make sense to tweak, just in case he has some major issue with it. Thanks!

As you know, you have a brake failure. The brakes must be renewed before this vehicle can be driven again. Something blew out causing loss of brake fluid and no brakes on the affected wheel(s). Your vehicle likely has a split brake system and you've lost half of your brakes, else you'd have no stopping power at all. Maybe the hand/parking brake would yet work. The '96 Tahoe, in standard form, has shoe brakes on the rear wheels, and I assume that is what you have. The failure could be a broken or leaky brake line/fitting or it may be the piston/seal in the wheel cylinder. By your description, I vote for the latter. As the brake shoes wear away, the piston in the wheel cylinder moves farther out. If the brake drum has been over machined, the piston can come out too far and fail. [I had the same thing happen on a 1986 Chevy Citation. The piston moved too far out, tipped, and spilled. In my case, it was my opinion there was a design flaw - the brake cylinder was too short. After the brakes were rebuilt by a brake shop, I noticed that the repair cylinder was longer than the original.] Whatever the case, I suspect you have a failure at the cylinder. You'll need to pull the wheel and brake drum to see what failed. Until then, we are guessing. Let us know what you find. Measure the brake drums to see if they are within specifications. If the drums are over the wear limit, new drums will be needed for the rebuild. Do a google search on "96 tahoe brakes" and you'll find there has been more than an ordinary amount of problems with those brakes.