I got my 850 a few days ago from a guy moving back to the states and he didn't want to ship it back. Before I bought it he had the rear brakes all replaced including the parking brakes however when I parked my car in the driveway last night it didn't grab (the car was facing uphill and rolled backwards) tonight it's still the same way however it will grab and hold the car when facing downhill, does anyone have any ideas what could have been done wrong and what I can do to fix it? I'm living in Germany and if you've ever been here or seen pictures there's not a lot of flat land here so the parking brake is a HUGE necessity. Thank you for all of your input! I appreciate any help I can get.

 

You need to adjust the pre-load on the shoes. There is a hole on the face of the hub portion of the rotor where you can get to the star adjuster. It is difficult to find just poking around but as I recall it is around the place where the hole is at about the 11:00 clock face position. Adjust it until it grabs and then spin the rotor. I put in a couple of lug bolts so that I could turn the rotor with a bar. After about a turn or so it will free up again. Re-tighten the star adjuster and repeat until you can no longer break it free. At that point back off the adjuster until the pads are "just touching" the drum.

This process centers the shoes and it is often overlooked when new shoes are installed.

At this point the parking brake should bite with just a few clicks up on the hand brake lever. If the parking brake lever still extends all the way and does not bite you need to adjust the cable which is done with an allen wrench through the trap door in the bottom of the center console glove box.

...Lee

 

Yep, definitely sounds like a parking brake adjustment issue.