Well, as the title states, this thread is with respect to the parking brake on the Baer Rear Disc conversion.

As of now, I have approximately 5000 miles on my Baer rear disc conversion, and the parking brake is still performing flawlessly. The parking brake holds extremely well -- it can easily hold my car on a hill, and I never have to first depress the brake pedal before engaging the parking brake lever.

I am posting this in response to those who believe that one must depress the brake pedal before engaging the parking brake. I do not believe that this is true, and moreover, this should not be the case with a cable-actuated brake mechanism. There is a definitive reason a "parking" or "emergency" (I am not going to engage in a semantic argument here) brake is cable actuated -- in the instance of a hydraulic failure, the driver maintains the ability to actuate the rear brakes of the vehicle. Granted, the cable/mechanical actuation of the mechanism in a parking-brake equipped caliper does not provide as much clamping force as does the pressure behind the piston. However, there should be enough mechanical advantage alone to allow the manual parking brake to stop and hold the vehicle. In essence, a properly-designed and properly-functioning mechanical parking brake mechanism should operate INDEPENDENTLY from the hydraulic braking system. In other words, if you are forced to depress the brake pedal to properly actuate your parking brake, your parking brake is NOT doing its job.

Now, looking back at the original installation of my Baer rear disc conversion, I had to perform a slight "modification" to the rear parking brake cables -- this modification was necessary to make sure that the parking brakes were not constantly engaged. Here is a description of what I did:

After I installed the kit and hooked up the rear parking brake cables, I noticed that the rear parking brakes were constantly engaged -- I made sure that I disengaged the automatic adjuster in the parking brake handle, yet there was simply not enough slack in the main parking brake cable (the cable that leads back to the handle assembly). Because of this, even when the parking brake handle was disengaged (in the down position), the cables attached to each caliper were being pulled together, and thus the parking brake remained engaged. To remedy this problem, I noticed that there was a small steel coupler which connected the main parking brake cable to the passenger side parking brake cable. These couplers are approximately 2" long, and the "bullets" at the end of each cable slip into the coupler. These couplers can be purchased at Napa for about a $1 each. So, I purchased two new couplers and MIG welded the ends together. Essentially, I gained approximately 1.5" of slack in the main cable. I installed this "new" coupler into the main/passenger cable lines, and voila, problem solved. The parking brake handle engages smoothly, the brakes hold extremely well, and most importantly, the parking brakes disengage without a hitch (no sticking, etc). So far, my car has survived 1 salty Illinois winter like this and I have yet to have any problems with parking brake engagement/disengagement.

Just some food for thought...

On a completely different and random note, my car has 27000 miles and the LF strut mount just died. Amazing, eh...

Hi illtmprdman

^^^^^^^^

I especially liked the part in your post where you said


"I noticed that there was a small steel coupler which connected the main parking brake cable to the passenger side parking brake cable. These couplers are approximately 2" long, and the "bullets" at the end of each cable slip into the coupler. These couplers can be purchased at Napa for about a $1 each."

I just took my '93 2.2 cable apart-it was a turnbuckle type connector , I cleaned up all the threads with taps and dies and greased everything.Adjusted the cable as per the book and the parking/emergency brake is working best it ever has and as it should. It is now a snap to adjust.


Alonmt