I am thinking of buying a 1998 C5 but i am hesitant about a problem the car has.....

the owner has stated that the hand brake doesnt work right and seems like it needs adjustment, is this a big issue? his thought is that the rotors need to be turned (i dont see the corrolation).


I dont know anything about C5's just mustangs, not sure if there is anything special to their hand brake design.

 

If your problem is the strength of the e-brake here is a fix-it tutorial. https://www.corvetteforum.com/techti...=158&TopicID=1

 

When I changed rear rotors last week, the procedure involved disconnecting the parking brake cables on the backside sof the backing plates. This was a snap because there was at least a 1/4" gap before the cables would begin to pull on the levers. (In hindsight, I could have just have easily pulled off the rear rotors off the parking brake shoes by leaving the cables attached.) Now, what this means is, there is a lot of handbrake movement before the cables start to pull on the lever. Next, there is some amount of normal brake handle movement after the levers are engaged before the shoes contact the drum. The sum of these two movements ususally means that the brake handle is pulled up to its physical limit before any significant pressure is applied by the shoes to the drum.

 

The above is a common problem caused by the brakes not being adjusted properly during build. The brakes on your car will be like new just follow the above proceedure in the link.

 

Thats a nice totally unnecessary tutorial.The problem lies with handbrake mechanism itself, and not so much with mechanism but the heavy grease used to lubricate the pawl.Now you can go in there and clean everything up but that requires removing the center console, a lot of unnecessary work. I dont use my handbrake but it must be working for inspection here in Texas. All I have to do is go out and work the handle 1/2 dozen times, then it will work just as designed. You will feel the teeth on the pawl engage which in turn turns a small drum which has the cable attached to it. It is just one of the quirks of a Corvette, not near as irritating as the column lock problem that I understand hasnt been fixed properly for the 6 speeds or even the C6

 

In my case I had to go like 25 clicks on the star adjuster on both the left and right E Brake until there was slight drag installing the drums. I think that when the car is new you get cable stretch and when the E Brake handle goes beyond 45* the auto adjuster doesn't work. I went without E Brakes for three years while my contacts at Bowling Green looked for a solution. I was trying to find out if the problem was in the handle and if it was repairable or if the E Brake handle had to be replaced. I finally took it to a dealer who said I'd been driving around with the brakes on. I got my car out of there before they could get to it. I found a solution to the problem on this forum by Evil Twin. My brake are back to like new for a year now.

Cheers, Curt

 

This guy is truly "LOST"......doesn't have a clue !!! buy ratcheting the lever mechanism you can take out any slack in the cable, this is up to a total of five clicks.... the interference fit between the shoes and the drum is the root cause of the poor lock up of the e brake shoes... This was one of the last things I tried to correct at BG before I retired... it is very common to have the interference fit between the shoes and the drum to be out 40 to fifty clicks, once this adjustment is made you should never have another issue with the ebrake system... Unless you do not use it and the grease dries up at the ratchet and the lockup won't work unless you take it apart and re grease it...
As far as "Lost" and his input, its just more Bullsh|t from someone who knows little or nothing about this car, or how it was designed. But offers information like it was gospel.

 

Im not lost, I wasted four hours of my time, only to find my emergency brake shoes were close to perfectly adjusted.Mine and many others have the same problem with the pawl not catching and pulling the cable.More people have this problem than maladjusted parking brake shoes.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../ebrake006.jpg check out this post http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...026&forum_id=1 And an apology would be in order! By the way I graduated from GMI in June 1958 Did my ojt at the Chevrolet plant in Norwood Ohio in the special engines department.

 

AS a member of the GM C5 Prototype team , I was involved in the prototype, launch in 97 and two years of debugging before retiring, in the five years that I have been here on this forum, I' ve helped hundreds of people with the most common problem with ebrakes.. and that is the poor factory adjustment. the lack of grease or the dried up grease is due to not using the ebrake and allowing the tunnel temps to dry out the lubricant... as far as posting one link to one issue, it hardly makes it an epidemic. Your rant about pulling up on the lever to adjust the ebrake 50 times is a waste of time, and energy because this has no bearing on the inter-fit. Like I said " YOU are LOST".... they can yank on that lever " Like I suspect you yank on yours" until they are blue in the face and it ain't gonna make their ebrake work like it should... Ive alread had four Private messages for help in the last hour. on this issue... how many have you had???

 

Just want to thank Evil-Twin for help with the Ebrake problem.

 

Thanks again for your help with my E-Brake problem.

Cheers, Curt

 

easy now

 

It is my pleasure to help you Jetspeedz and the other three guys and try to save you from the wannabees... they are the reason I rarely post in open forum anymore...until they **** me off with their BS. The car is great but it has its kinks, I am proud to have been a part of this venture... AS I have said hundreds of times... it's a 100,000 dollars sports car with a 50,000 dollar price tag.. if it was perfect and had no flaws we would not have been able to afford it... Thank GM engineering and GM Project management for keeping this car " IN Budget" .... and delivering and designing the best American sports car on the planet. If this very same car came off the assembly line in Stuttgart Germany, and wore a Porche name tag, it would be 100,000 dollars.

 

I wish you'd post more. The non-mechanical types need your info ! And the mechanical types need a laugh too.

 

Nice to see you have an entourage who think you are the second coming of Christ. Mr Briggs statement that most of these problems originate at the factory is flat wrong. All 50 states require a safety inspection, that includes Florida which does not require an emissions test.Also there has never been a TSB or recall regarding the parking brake.Not saying there wont be one, it took seven years for the column lock fiasco and as of last month when I had my A-4 done the six speed cure was not working and another software upgrade was in the works.If you worked for Gm then you would have told this membership that the engineers don't make the final decisions on these or any cars, the bean counters do!In that particular instance since they purchased the cheapest components available they should have made the system either redundant or designed in an automatic bypass when a failure occurred, lighting up the DIC and telling you that you aren't going anywhere doesn't cut it.And finally those of you whose problem originates at the parking brake handle and you don't feel like removing your center console and ratcheting the handle doesn't break loose the grease, a hyperdermic filled with WD-40 will.Evil-twin I suggest you get out of the house, go for cruise, you are spending way too much time sitting at that computer.Get a life!

 

You are correct. The tech tip is not going to fix the E-brake. The factory grease in the secondary ratchet assy turns to glue, and it needs to be cleaned. That was my post on how to fix it. Sorry Evil Twin, you are quite mistaken.

 

[QUOTE=lost] Mr Briggs statement that most of these problems originate at the factory is flat wrong.

Mr. Lost: After ten years in the Air Force (Fighter Pilot) and Thirty Plus as an airline pilot, being addressed as Mr. makes me cringe. The two problems that I've had were, no auto adjust on the E Brake and the Passenger window inop in the up position. You might be right on the E Brake problem for auto adjust, but Evil-Twin's fix got mine working.

Now onto the window: I found the up stops were at full travel and never adjusted which allowed the window to go too far up and the cable housing spring was bound which bound up the motor and caused a thermal switch to not let the motor run. I'm assuming most of this as I didn't design the system and don't have the specs on it. When properly adjusted the window now works. This has been an on going problem with the C5 and most may be caused by improper adjustment at the factory. The factory fix from what I read on the forum is replace the regulator assembly which may not be a permanent fix.

 

Given the fact that the C5 parking brake is basically a drum brake setup, it includes an automatic adjuster. if the initial adjustment is wrong the adjuster will not work.

What I did to fix mine was to adjust the shoes for minimum of drag. When the brake still would not hold the car on the driveway, I pulled the lever up a couple times when rolling backwards (the same way the drums on my 69 Camaro would adjust) while holding the button in. After doing this a few times the brake is now adjusted that it will hold my car on my fairly steep driveway.
I think there is too much about the little problems this car has. The C5 would be a bargain at twice the price.

 

Oh For Gods sake, I can't believe this "I'm absolutely right and you're absolutely wrong stuff

Face it, there are three reasons why the parking brake won't work.

The shoes are out of adjustment. (you need to adjust the shoes).

The cable has stretched (you need to cycle the ratchet mechanism a half dozen tiomes while holding the button in).

The grease in the ratchet mechanism has dried out. (you need to re-grease the mechanism).

The shoes being out of adjustment is a problem that affects both new and old cars. A stretched cable usually only occurs while the car is relatively new and dried out grease is usually found in older cars, particularly if the parking brake is seldom used.

As Walter Cronkite used to say "And that's the way it is", 'nuff said

 

I bought a used 1998 and the emergency brake didn't work, a trip to the dealer was no help since it didn't work the next day. I adjusted the rear brake shoes two years ago and the emergency brake still did not work. I removed the handle assembly, cleaned it then regreased it with Mobil 1 grease; it has worked great since then. There are two good links above that will help you or a mechanic repair the emergency brakes, both adjustment of the shoes and cleaning/ regreasing the handle assembly. I see no reason to dismiss people when they offer correct answers to questions as Lost did.