my problem
today it was the coldest day we had in bklyn, NY. it snowed a little bit. At 6pm i started my car and realized my ebrake would not dis-engage.

I bought the car in july with 126k on it. i found a few receipts in th glove box. The previous owner had the car serviced at honda twice at 108k. Honda recorded from the owner that the e-brake wouldnt disengage in cold weather. today it was cold and the e-brake wouldnt disenagage. also when the guy brought the
car in for the 3rd time, honda changed the rear calipers becuase of this problem. any reason???

the handle goes down, but there is not tension
I left the car in reverse over night n prob gona leave it in gear for the winter when i park it. but how do i dis engage it? i drove the car around to see if maybe they would let go once the brakes heated up, but nothing happened. what should i do? if any one can help thanks alot. i appreciate any help you can give me


98 accord ex
5 spd

 

well, a temporary fix would be to cut the cable...but i don't think that's really what you want to do...

 

I have heard of this, and it happened to my camaro....the line freezes up or the tensioner breaks or won't release due to cold. My guess would be to replace e-brake line or adjust tensioner, but its just a guess.

 

i never do this but cant you just keep it in first gear with out the e brake?

 

i know, i park it in my back yard on a leveled surface, but i need that ebrake.

 

There's 2 ways for this to happen. You're gonna have to look & see... Take off your back wheels, or lay on the ground under the back bumper to watch them. There's a cable that hooks on a lever on each caliper.

When you try to release the handbrake, maybe the cable is sticking. If it's rusty, get new cables. If it's wet & frozen, maybe just clean it out, but it'll probably keep doing it. So get a new cable anyway.

Otherwise (this happened on my Integra) the lever on the caliper sticks. My cable was nice & smooth, but the lever on the caliper had enough rust so it's spring wasn't strong enough to release the handbrake. Rebuild or replace the caliper.

Either way, you can just reach under there & pull on that lever on each caliper to release the brake.

 

what u mean by rebuilding caliper? just the ebrake part of it?

 

The handbrake stuff is inside, you have to take out the piston to get at the auto-adjusting mechanism. So you end up rebuilding the whole thing. There's a strange tool you need to get that stuff apart. I just got rebuilt calipers when it happened to me.

But first, check to see if it's just the cable.

 

well i left the car over ngiht with the e-brake handle down, the brake losened itself up. I did use the e-brake 2day after i drove the car n left it up for an hr, but it did not freeze. i guess the cold weather froze it when i had it up all day....thank for the help should i get it checked out anyways?

 

I would just because that is not normal operation. I live in colorado and it snows here and gets cold too, and mine doesn't do that at all. Cable or adjuster, check those first before getting into the whole rear brakes (its cheaper that way) but the only way you will know if its fixed is if next time its cold it doesn't do it. Just keep it in mind.

 

What you still need to do is figure out WHAT is sticking. Set the parking brake overnight, when you can mess with it in the morning. Chock the wheels, release the brake, lay down under the trunk. Pull the cables & levers to see which is sticking. You should be able to tell if you pay attention when you're pulling on it.