My parking brake has stopped working. It seems to have lost it's grip on the cable or something. I can pull it up and there no tension and the brake will not engage. I pulled the boot but access is limited to see what happened. I was wondering if this is a typical problem and what it could be before I dive into tearing it a part. Looks like I'll have to pull the passengers seat out. What could this be? I search online for this but didn't find anything I could use. 2007 Base M6 96000 miles.

 

Start at the rear. Pull the rotors & check the condition of the parking brake shoes & the parking brake cable connections. Have a helper pull up on the parking brake handle & see if there is movement of the cable end at the rear. If not, you will have to access the parking brake handle to check the connection there.

 

Its the parking brake handle ratchet. It's not catching. I found some posts on here about a spring failure. I pulled it apart and couldn't see where the problem could be. It may be the ratchet spring. I'm thinking I can just get a new assembly and replace it. Can I use the existing cable and just replace the handle? I'm trying to avoid getting under the car.

 

https://www.gscreations.com/c6-corve...ustom-hot-rod/


Quick crash course on the E brake system.

The E shoes are not self adjusting, and you have to first adjust them correctly by removing the rear rotor/drum, manually adjusting the adjuster, then putting the drum back on. Short version here, you want to adjust the shoe outward per side, so that the shoe just starts to rub the drum when it being turned, then adjuster backed off just enough that you don't hear the hiss contact as the drum is being turned. With shoes adjusted correctly, not contacting the drum with the lever down (no hissing of the shoe to drum as the drum is turned), and back on the lever, less than 13 clicks of the lever pulled all the way up to the point that your about to dislocate your shoulder trying to get another click.

Next item is the part 8 in the first photo, which can wear out at its fulcrum point, and will cause less pressure to one side of the cars E shoe than the other when the handle is pulled upwards.

From there, you have the two into one piece of the handle cable end, then the cable to the Lever assembly. As for the lever assembly, it will semi self adjust, but only at the assembly, and not back at the E shoe adjuster.

As for Lever assembly, it gets removed from the side of the torque tube from the top side on you remove the boot, but will still need to get under the car to remove the E brake cables to it's main cable section. As for a broken spring on it, pretty easy to source, and would be a lot cheaper than having to replace the entire assembly instead.

 

Thanks everyone. I've got a new handle assembly and I got the old one out and the new one ready to install. Everything was going good until I noticed my drivers side cable spring was broken and missing at the drum. I need to replace the drivers side emergency brake cable. There's a 10mm bolt just rear of the equalizer I can't quite get to it and that needs to be removed to get the cable out. I've read that one way to get to that bolt is to remove the passenger side muffler. Has anyone got to that bolt without removing the muffler?