Parking Brake Rebuild:

Video Tips:

Video Transcript:

Hi I'm Sam with California Pacific JBugs. Today we're going to show you how to replace the emergency brake handle.

To remove the e-brake handle we're going to loosen up the e brake cable nuts on both sides, that way we can pull the equalizer bar up and out of the way. 10 millimeter wrench, 10 millimeter socket or two 10 millimeter wrenches either way. We loosen the two lock nuts, we take the top one off, we loosen the lower lock nut, we do this to both cables, so you can pull the equalizer bar off.

We can go through and remove the very small circlip snap ring. With the snap ring removed you can pull out the pivot pin from the e brake handle and pull out the e break handle. With the emergency brake or parking brake handle out we can see that it doesn't actually need to be replaced more so just reset.

It is very common what happens when you pull the emergency brake up too tall. The actual mechanism will flip around and reset in this case it's been lodged as well. What we'll do is pull out the parking brake ratchet, we'll unstick the push rod from this cat's paw here and we'll just reset the two. What we'll do is stuff the push rod with the cup facing this way. We'll rotate the cat's paw around and we can see now that it's engaged it's working back and forth with the push button.

With the cat's paw in place we can slide the ratcheting mechanism in place. You'll see it's got this large circular notch on the backside which actually keys in inside here. Like that we can go through slide to handle back between the cables. Engage the cables in either ramp on the back hand side. As you can see here there's two notches on the backhand side the cable and two ramps. With those in place push the handle down into the chassis and we'll take our pin and without pulling the e-brake up all the way we can see that the ratcheting mechanism is now working the way it should.

With the pivot pin in place we'll take the snap ring. Snap it back into its groove, holding it in place. Slide the parking brake equalizer bar back over the nub on the handle and then we can tighten down the e brake cable. Bottom out the adjustment screw here. Then do the same thing for the other side. Now with both cables tight and a good snug pull should hold the car security. With the adjustment checked we'll slide the locknuts in place and lock those down with a wrench and a socket.

Now that this is all installed we can install the new emergency brake boot as he did not have one installed previously. Here we've got a factory German emergency brake boot. Couple things I want to touch base with you guys you can see what's going on the inside. We've got the two foam seals which go around these slots here. These slots are actually for the heater control knobs on the left side and the right side. On the top hand side we can actually see the kind of snout here with these two flaps. These flaps actually have a slot in them as well and what these are for is the cable adjustment so that when the boots on you can actually go through and tighten the e-brake cables through these holes here. Of course the front has the cut out for the handle itself.

Typically these are installed before the carpet but we're going to muscle through it today and show you guys how it's done. Installing the e break boot is going to be kind of a delicate balancing act between pulling the handle up and down, and pulling the heater control levers up and down to get everything in place.

First we're going to slide it over the handle first getting it back to about the handles or rather the heater levers. Stick those through on either side, at which point we can drop the handle down. Stretch the boot up over the top of the cables and with the emergency brake cables fully tight the way they are. They are they are going to present a little bit of a challenge to pulling the boot back alternating between pulling the lever up and the control levers up. We can see that, we've got everything installed the way it should be.

Now it's just a matter of tucking the flange underneath the cutout in the carpet. With a little tugging and pulling, and pushing and prying we were able to get the e brake boot in place. Tucked underneath the carpet lip all the way around. The parking brake is repaired. Cables are now tight and we've got a new boot in place. You can install the passenger seat sliding it back in and we are all done here.