Hey guys, I changed my rear calipers and pads about a week ago due to worn pads and stuck calipers and now my e brake barely works. When pulled all the way up it will slow the car down a bit while moving but not even close to locking the wheels in rain. It also has alot less resistance than before. Before it worked great and felt great, but now not so much. I bled the brakes and I can see the cable move a good amount when the lever is pulled. Maybe I turned the piston too far back in the caliper or maybe the brakes need to be bled better? I've put alot of miles on since with no improvement. I thought maybe the calipers would self adjust after a while but nothing seemed to happen. If anyone has any ideas or can help me out I'd appreciate it, thanks.

 

Have you tried adjusting it?

 

Adjusting the cable or moving the piston outwards more?

 

The cable.

The piston moves out as far as it can when you hit the brakes, you can't adjust that.

 

I figured it moved as far out as it could (I mean it would have too, but at the same time I dont know these things for sure so i have to ask) so I will try adjusting the cable. Thanks for the help. Could you give me a brief description on how to do that?

 

I'm in just about the same situation...

I read a thread a while ago about tightening the ebrake but it didnt do anything.

how do you mean adjusting the cable?

 

As shown in the FSM:

 

thanks pmohr, ill try that tomorrow.

The method i tried before was similar but without pressing the brake pedal or pulling the ebrake lever.

hopefully this does the trick,

 

pmohr thats the same thing i had did totally fix that issue less than 2minz

 

You might want ot check the Ebrake cables too. They are know to have the brackets brake off the trailing arm and also rust up if they are pitched between the control arm.

 

i had to do the same thing when i first got my car, (same thing, replace calipers and pads, parking break didn't work) it's a simple fix.

just some advice, if you read any directions on how to do it they say that you need to take off pieces of the trim to get to the adjusting nut, but you should be fine if you just take off the cover and do it with the handle all the way up

 

Hell, in most cases the threaded rod has already worn it's own hole in the ebrake boot.

 

i had that when i bought the maxipad.

this is pretty cool, that we can adjust it here, and dont gotta get under the car

 

so true my e-brake boot is a piece of shat i'd replace it but im so poor

 

considering you just replaced your rear pads and your e brake used to work fine i am going to assume you the piston is oriented wrong. the rear calipers have what looks like a + symbol on it and it is supposed to be oriented so it is straight up and down. in otherwords so it looks like + not x

 

That's really just to line up the piston with the nub on the pad, but it would be a good thing to check.

 

The pistons were lined up right thanks though. I had some time today and i adjusted it. Took no time and was easy, which was nice, and now the e brake works great, thanks for the help guys.

 

I tired this earlier and it didn't make it any better.
Actually, now the ebrake light on the dash doesn't come on every time i pull it.
Is there any other cause/ fix for this problem?
thanks

 

Did you adjust the parking brake light switch as shown in the above FSM image?

From here all you can really do is tear apart the rear brakes and look over everything.

 

I didn't see where the parking brake light switch was. But the brake doesn't work any better either, so i think i'll have to check the rear brakes out.