how many clicks does your ebrake have before it goes to the top? mine is about 11 and it seems like way too much....

and if I am parking on an incline I have to pull the damn thing all the way to the top with quite a bit of force before I can remain stationery with using just the ebrake

is it supposed to be like that?

 

You can have it adjusted yourself or at a shop. Mine used to engage real high, and would not hold the car well on steep inclines until it was adjusted when I had my front pads replaced.

 

You actually are supposed to leave it in gear.. .simply in case the e-brake fails you have somthing else to hold your car.... ANd yah, just get it tightened at a shop or do it yourself. Its really not that hard. Just look for a wire underneath your car whcih goes from the ebrake all the way to one of the back wheels.... it should look like clothesline wire. thats what needs to be adjusted.


Hope taht helps.


Merry Cristmas.

 

I'll second this and take it a step further. Not only should you not rely on how many clicks, you can save some wear and tear by raising the emergency brake without "clicking" at all- hold in the emergency brake release button, raise the lever, and release the button.

 

I think the wear and tear on that would be neglegable.(can't spell this morning)

 

Can't really leave the car in gear if you need to remote start it.

 

On an incline, you're supposed to steer your car towards the curb also, so in case it rolls, it doesn't go to the middle of the road!

The only exception to this rule is if you're parked by a cliffside.

 

If it's really cold your not supposed to set your e-brake because the caliper will often times freeze. Like mine did this morning.

 

I never put on the e-brake when parking on flats. I just leave mine in 1st gear (P for auto).

I recall a mechanic telling me that using e-brakes all the time stretches the cable or something in the long run. This perhaps means that you will need to keep recalibrating it (pain in the butt).

 

I use mine all the time. It's not really that big a deal, after they first strech, it won't really any more. It's just a break in issue. I bet that somewhere in one of those scheduled services there is a check e-brake test that is done standard.

They did break on one of my cars, although after 12 years of (ab)use, 130,000 miles or so. The car had also been up and down the Eastern Seaboard, been through blizzards, all that great stuff. My conclusion: just use the e-brake, it's not a big deal.

 

Every time I take my car in for scheduled maintenance, they do the e-brake calibration for me. No big deal.

 

OK correct me if I am wrong. In the old days you set the emergency brake when you stopped, because transmissions were poor (slipping out of gear and the such). The whole idea behind the emergency break was to have a way of stopping the car if the brakes (fluid system) failed (hold over from the early motoring days). The newer transmissions are all much better and both the automatic and the standard transmissions are designed to hold the weight of the car even if it’s on a 20% grade without moving.

The brakes however, are another story. The newer cars have brake drums and rotors that are thinner and the composite they are made of are not as hard as the older ones. The new composite is supposed to dissipate heat quicker than the old metal composite (they also wear much faster). If you are diving around in stop and go traffic all day and set the emergency brake, the pads will be pulled up tight against the brake causing a hot spot on the metal. This can (and does) cause warped rotors and brake drums to become out-of-round. This results in “shimmy” when you stop. The only way to fix this is “cut the warp off”.

I live in a state that is basically flat and you can count on one hand all the times I have set the emergency brake in the last 5 years. I haven’t had a rotor turned or brake drum turned in that time. I have had new brake shoes and disks pads replaced over the years on three different cars; however the drums and rotors were fine. Why turn drums and rotors if they don’t need it. Turning rotors and drums is taking away surface material that will shorten the life of the parts. I had a Ford Taurus one time that the front rotors warped within the first 3000 miles of driving and the dealer wanted to turn the rotors. I told him he could pull mine off and replace them with parts on any new car he had on the lot if he wanted to and if he felt they would be OK on a new car for a new customer. I got new rotors.

Bob

 

I agree about the "hot spot".

I used to use the e-brake all the time before (real hard too), and my rotors got warped (rear ones) more than I wanted. Now thanks to you, I know why.

Now I rarely use the e-brake and never had the problem since.

 

I hadn´t thought of that. Thanks. I guess I will stop using it all the time and use it only on very steep hills (don´t have many here). At least my rotors and drums are not warped yet.

I just used it all the time because I thought, "what´s the harm... it only takes me a second to pull the handle".