Looking for parking brake info. Pulling the parking brake handle basically does nothing, the carr will still roll freely, light comes on indicating the brake is on but nothing happens in the rear end of the car. I looked at some diagrams and it seems like there are pads inside the rear rotors. OK, maybe I need an adjustment. Can't find the adjusting holes. I just saw a post fromsomeone that had replaced rotors and the replacements didn't have the adjustment holes. Maybe that is my problem. Moving on... Tried adjusting the bolt inside the car below the brake handle, now if I pull really hard, the parking brake sort of almost holds the car but not really. I decided to just not use the brake at all and that was fine for several months. I finally was annoyed enough about it that I took it in to the dealer and they estimate $650 to replace both corroded cables. Most of this they told me was 4.5 hours labor which of course they will charge even if it only takes them 2 hours. I paid for diagnosis and received a list of needed parts.

Now my questions are:

Is it possible to find the interior end of the cable(s), squirt some penetrating oil or something in there and maybe things will free up? Will this get fluid into parts of the brake rotors /pads / calipers where I DON'T want any sort of liquid / lubricant? Even if I can get the cables to move, it seems that the current problem is that the brakes can be applied (although not hard enough) and the problem would be with the brake not releasing. I may have confirmed this to myself because when I pulled out of the dealership, OMG the brakes were noisy but after a few blocks of driving, it cleared up so I assume that the brake was applied (yes the handle was released) and took a little bit of driving / vibration / wear to loosen up. If this is the problem, it seems even if I can loosen the cable, I would still be unable to adjust the parking brake. I can totally hear the dealer saying, well, we replaced the cables for $650 and now the brake needs to be adjusted but we cannot access the adjuster so we need to replace the rotors, while back there, let's just do the rear brake service, even though it's not needed. With the cables, this could be a $1000+ project. I don't need the e-brake that badly!

How hard is it to replace these cables?

Has anyone serviced the pads for the parking brake? I've done plenty of front disc brake pad replacements, in fact I just did front pads and rotors on our '00 Windstar Mom-mobile a few weeks ago but have never seen the indise of a rotor on rear brakes. Drums yes, rear rotors, no.

What's it like in there, easy to do, do these pads wear much? I am just a bit over 110,000 miles.

Any parking brake comments welcome...

Thanks,

Don
Billings MT
'99 V70XC

 

A some point (unless you live in AZ) they will either rust or the shoes will delaminate inside the drum.
Lubing them will not do much good and by the time you get the car apart enough to find enough of the cable to lube them you may as well finish the job and replace them!

The rear seat has to come out, the entire console comes out and it can be a real SOB job to do fishing the cable through a very small hole.
In reality it will take at least 3 hours by someone who has done it before