![]() ![]() When you engage your handbrake, the metallic cable passes through an intermediate lever before coming to an equaliser, which splits the power evenly between the brake pads. Manual handbrakes are used either by pulling a level upwards or by pressing a pedal down with your foot. Secondly, it allows you to engage the gas pedal while braking, which facilitates more advanced driving techniques such as drifting, and makes seamless hill starts easier. This serves two functions firstly, it ensures that you have a method of stopping your vehicle should the hydraulic brake fail. Unlike the footbrake, the handbrake is connected to the back wheels of your car via a metallic cable. Despite performing the same function, they operate individually, and are best suited to different circumstances.ĭepending on the age, model, and transmission of the car in question, the handbrake can be manual or electronic, foot-operated or hand-operated. Your Haynes manual has all the details.Every car, be it automatic or manual, has two brakes the main brake, which is found to the left of the accelerator, and the handbrake, interchangeably referred to as the parking brake or emergency brake. Some cars and trucks make it easier though, with a combination of inputs at the dash that will also retract it. Typically, to retract the parking brake you need an app for your phone or tablet and an ODBII Bluetooth adapter to connect your phone with your car. If the rear caliper has an electric motor attached to the back of it, instead of a metal cable, that also indicates an electronic parking brake. If there is a push-button to activate the parking brake in your vehicle, obviously it is an electronic system. But if you try to force a screw type caliper piston back into the caliper with a C-clamp, as we typically recommend with the front caliper and many rear calipers, you can damage the caliper. ![]() If you can't make the caliper back out electrically, it is usually possible to wind it back with an inexpensive brake caliper tool. That information can of course be found in your Haynes manual. One of the reasons for automakers moving to electric parking brakes is the automation it allows - an electric parking brake can be programed to activate automatically when the transmission is placed into park.Įlectric parking brakes do add a complication though when you are doing a brake job - you need to know the secret trick to make the computer unscrew the brake piston. Instead of hydraulic pressure clamping the rear disc, or a cable pulling a lever arm which turns a screw ramp, an electric motor turns a threaded piston in the caliper, clamping the disc. In the past few years, as rear disc brakes became commonplace, electronic parking brakes have proliferated. The parking brake, aka emergency brake, aka handbrake, aka e-brake, was until recently still very much like early mechanical brakes, with a cable connected to a pedal or a hand lever. In the late 1960s the United States Department of Transportation mandated that hydraulic systems would have a redundancy for safety, which they still do. This system was better in that it was easier to engineer, and easier to keep in proper adjustment, but it could fail suddenly if one of the hydraulic components started to leak. Sometime before WWII, most cars had moved to a hydraulic brake system, or as the old timers call them "juice brakes". In the dawn of the automotive age, all brakes were mechanical, using either a cable or system of rods to force a friction surface to rub on a metal surface connected to the wheels. ![]()
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