Date:         Mon, 04 Aug 1997 20:14:17 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Austin <austins@ix.netcom.com>
Subject:      Re: E-brake adventures

At 09:48 PM 8/5/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Anyway, when parking, I pulled on the parking brake like I usually do and I
>got a POP and then noticed that the handle went up a lot farther than it
>used to.  I immediately suspected that I broke a cable and decided not to
>use the parking brake until I got it figured out for sure.
>
>During lunch at work I crawled under the van to see what I could see (my
>work clothes allow for that, I work in a tire shop :-) I could not see any
>evidence of a broken cable.  Where the cable comes from the handle to the
>equalizer bar is OK, and no real obvious looseness when I pulled on either
>of the parking brake cables.  So I figure that rather than a broken cable I
>may have a "stretched" cable, and one that stretched rather violently. 
>Probably like the clutch cable on my old '78 Bus did.

Personally I'd *highly* recommend pulling both rear drums & make sure you
don't have a problem with the e-brake linkage to the shoes - a 'pop'
indicates something letting loose (& possibly temporarily catching on
something else) as opposed to stretching... btw, B4 letting her down off
the jacks, always apply the foot/hydraulic brake & re-check that the wheels
turn with a slight scraping sound; allows things to settle into running
condition, which is often tighter than you may desire.

Austin