Parking brake not holding? Check these things first

[jeepcoma]

I swapped in a parking brake assembly to fix my broken one... only after inspecting the old one I took out and having one of the same problems on the new one I put it (which worked perfectly on the bench), some more careful inspection led to me find two (maybe three tips) that could be easily checked and tried before removing the whole assembly.

 

There are two springs on the assembly. There's a tiny little one at the top that puts tension on the holding mechanism for the ratchet. If you hear a nice solid "tick-tick-tick" from the ratchet teeth as you push the pedal down, this is probably working correctly. If you don't hear a solid ticking noise, or your parking brake doesn't hold and instead just returns to the top (while probably partially engagin the teeth), first check that you haven't lost this spring and it's not broken. It does not have a lot of tension in it, and it's pretty small, so be careful not to break it.

 

If the spring is there, check two other things: take a tiny eye-glasses sized flat blade screw driver and clean any gunk, grease, and dirt off the teeth you can see exposed in the back. The teeth appear to be coated with grease, which over time picks up dirt. Since the spring which engages the holder on the teeth doesn't have a lot of power behind it, a wad of grease or gunk is enough to stop the lever from fully engaging the teeth... which causes the pedal to pop back up.

 

Next to check is the wiring. There are quite a few wires running right next to the e-brake assembly, including the wire for the brake light. I discovered that a part of the wiring harness was falling down onto the ratchet lever, preventing it from fully engaging! This was a big eureka moment for me, I couldn't figure out why I still wasn't getting full engagement after swapping assemblies and cleaning the teeth out; it just didn't want to hold today, but was working initially when I installed it. If I manually forced the lever back, it held just fine (remember, it's a bit hard to see what's going on once everything is installed), so I moved some wires to a better location, and ta-da! It works perfectly.

 

One other thing to check is a larger cable return spring towards the front of the assembly. It runs parallel to the parking cable and assists the cable return to "open" when you pull the brake release... if you don't have that spring, only line tension in the brake will disengage the brake, and also only line tension will keep the ratchet engaged. Mine was missing on the original mechanism, but the brakes were frozen anyway so it had no trouble returning to disengaged. If things are working properly, you'll probably need this.

 

So, any of you with parking brake problems (I know you're out there), get a flashlight and maybe a mirror and take a few minutes to poke around. It could be a simple solution to your problem.

[dasbulliwagen]

Mine works just fine, but it doesnt hold the brake tight enough. I have adjusted the rear shoes and got just a little better tension, but it still doesnt give the nice tight feeling you like to get to know its gonna hold on a hill. Is there any adjustment for the cables themselves? I havent had a chance to look for one yet and havent noticed any threads on here adressing that particular part of the parking brake.

[flint54]

Underneath the bed is the equalizer where the front cable engages the two rear cables. The front cable can be adjusted to increase or decrease tension. Before cranking up the cable tension, I recommend you check the rear cables to make sure they're not screwed up (like mine were).