Having recently replaced the shoes and fitted a new drum on the trucks handbrake set up (which is your basic drum on the drive shaft, operated by cable) I am still not happy with the holding performance of the handbrake. It will hold the truck well when it is empty but park it on a slope with a load and you need to use the engine to hold the truck. My understanding of adjusting this type of brake is that you wind the adjuster, at the bottom, out until the shoes grab the drum and then back off until the drum spins free. However there is another adjustment on the lever that is operated by the handbrake handle, which spreads the brake shoes at the top. I adjusted this so that the spreading bar that the lever attaches to is sitting straight up and down. Should I be adjusting this the same as the bottom internal adjuster? Basically I am trying to get the brake set up so the curved shoes grab on 100% of their surface area, which they may not be doing at the moment, thus leading to reduced performance. I am thinking that the handbrake was designed so it would hold the truck with a full load on a reasonable slope.
I never felt safe leaving it in neutral loaded with that type of setup. Empty was "OK" but never super. Your adjustment seems correct. I always used the in cab handle adjuster for fine tuning or wear adjustment. To me it is a poor system at best. Good luck Ron
Don't know if you r driving a freightliner or not but they had some pretty funky adj. procedures w/ a certain series of brakes... including the driveline brake.