What can be done? My e brake is almost useless. It would be nice to be able to park on a slope w/o rolling. Help!

Rick

 

Sorry man, there is no hope, the purchase, and leverage of the small drum brakes are NOT able to handle the car weight and large tires....it's not happening...bad design from the git go.....there are other cars with disc rear brakes and special mechanical calipers which will lock the rotors, but they seem to be maintanance nitemares from what I seen....

rear disc brakes make an ebrake allmost silly....frankly the requirement should be eliminated....

GENE

 

:iagree: I've had two c3's and the eb never worked on either one.

 

Mine work for some reason :confused: I replaced the originals with stainless and all stainless parts, lubed the cable up good, and they work! I will have to admit they are about the most ridiculous part on the car though. After the install is complete they must be "burnished" which consists of riding the e-brake while you are traveling. If you need the procedure I will be happy to post it, please let me know. I still don't think I would trust them on a hill without doing the uphill or downhill park thing though. :cheers:

 

I put all new SS hardware in mine and they barely worked. Sometime after that, I had to replace the rear rotors and guess what - they work great now. I think the "drum" part of the rotor was just worn out and I couldn't adjust the shoes enough to take up the slack.

 

mine works on relatively flat roads :D

 

I removed mine, and have contemplated trying to retro-fit one that is mounted to the rear of the driveshaft.

 

Quote:

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Mine work for some reason I replaced the originals with stainless and all stainless parts, lubed the cable up good, and they work! I will have to admit they are about the most ridiculous part on the car though. After the install is complete they must be "burnished" which consists of riding the e-brake while you are traveling. If you need the procedure I will be happy to post it, please let me know. I still don't think I would trust them on a hill without doing the uphill or downhill park thing though.
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Mine is utterly shot...I un-siezed and lubed things when I replaced the rear rotors and calipers a couple of months ago, adjusted the little star wheel as much as I could manage,and snugged up the cable beyond the max...still no holding whatsoever. I just ordered a SS kit, and when it comes I'll take a deep breath and replace all the hardware (heard it is a real pain though...). If you have any handy tricks, by all means post the procedure, I'll be tackling it soon!

-Roy

 

My best advice to anyone doing this procedure would be to combine it with a rear wheel bearing inspection and re-pack. The e-brakes are really easy to do with the spindles removed, but are a total PITA :cuss :mad :cuss to do with the spindles in place (all though not impossible).