355 adjusting parking brake and turning back wheels

Hey all, I'm trying to adjust the parking brake on my long-neglected (by the previous owner) F355, and have a couple questions, one kind of embarrassing.

First the reasonable question: when I'm rotating that little spur gear thingy inside the rotor, which way is "tighter?" As in, which makes the brake apply itself harder? Rotating like the spur gear is rolling "into" the car or "out of/away from" the car? Alternately, moving the outer teeth of the gear up or down?

Then the embarrassing question: what's the baseline for how hard it should be to turn the back wheels? I have the parking brake released, and the car is not in gear (it's manual, if that matters). One rear wheel is on the ground, though. The other is elevated and removed. In order to be able to turn it, I had to put two bolts back in and use a prybar between them. It doesn't take *all my strength* to do it - it's not even strenuous - but it's substantially more difficult to turn than I would expect. I wouldn't expect to need a pry bar. Is it dragging, or is that normal operation of the differential?

I'm a big dude, so I'm reasonably strong in spite of not working out. But I'm becoming concerned that in addition to not grabbing tightly enough, the parking brake may not be completely releasing. Thanks for opinions and jeers alike!

 

Now I removed the other rear wheel, which is also really hard to turn, and it makes an awful squealing noise when I do. Since that would seem to rule out the differential, any other suggestions? I drove the car around the block at 10-15 mph (since the brakes are still about 10% until I replace the MC and change the fluid/bleed them). It didn't seem weird, but that's also as much and as fast as I've yet driven it. Here's a video:

 

Thanks! Yeah, I am expecting a new master cylinder tonight, and beyond that, I'm already seriously considering replacing all pads, rotors, and shoes. I was actually able to figure out the screw question from a parts diagram (assuming the inner screw is not left-hand thread). I just hope I don't have to replace wheel bearings, as that sounds extremely expensive, or like a huge hassle, or both, from what I've read.

 

For posterity, in case anyone finds this thread, I finally got the parking brake working, nearly two years later. There's two critical pieces of information I needed that are non-intuitive.

First, the handle doesn't work like on other cars I've driven. To release it, you have to press the button while it's in the up position, then lower it while holding the button. Otherwise it just stays "on." If it's down, you have to lift it back up first. If it was disengaged, it will offer resistance and clicking like in e.g. a Porsche 968. If not it will just come up easily and quietly like it's not attached to anything. Thanks to Dave Lelonek for making a YouTube video that explains this.

The other surprise was that the gears need to be rotated in opposite directions. IIRC, the LR one goes down to get "tighter," but the RR one had to be turned up to be tighter.

Oh, and the LSD definitely was making the wheels harder to turn. When I got both off the ground at once, it was much easier.