I remember hearing years ago that if you simply “engaged” the parking brake, it was not necessarily engaged. You had to hold down on the “regular” brakes, when you engaged the parking brake, or else it would not engage.
However, in my last vehicle, I didn’t see anything saying that, and have not found any reliable corroboration on it, either.
Anyone???
(Sorry for such an “engaging” question.):o
Do you mean put the car in Park on an automatic??
I don’t ever recall such a design. Usually, the emergency brake is a manual expansion of the rear brake pads (or contraction if disc brakes). Maybe older models simply locked the pads in place, requiring the driver to hold down the brakes before applying. But the ones I’ve worked with simply expand the pads enough to contact the drums.
However, if the brake pads are out of adjustment, simply applying the emergency brake may not expand the pads far enough to contact the drum for proper friction. Holding down the regular brake may squeeze the pads out farther and allow the emergency brake to lock, and maybe this is the reason for this advice years ago, but I’m not aware if such a method will actually allow the brake pads to lock in place or if they will simply recontract once the engine is off.
Doesn’t make any sense to me. Parking/emergency brakes apply regardless of whether the service brakes are applied or not. Somebody was misinformed or misunderstood.
I remember seeing in a JC Whitney cataloge many moons ago a hydrolic device that attached into the normal brake line. I think you pressed down on the normal brake, set this device (it seems like basically a valve) then trelease and the brakes would be ‘locked’.
Yes, with this system it is necessary to apply the service brake first. It actually uses the service brake system as the parking brake. As far as I know, they’re strictly add-on devices–I’m not aware of any car manufacturers using these.
It’s usually better to out your foot on the brake and then apply the parking brake (I guess you could use your right foot to apply the main brake if you have a foot operated parking brake.) You can apply more braking pressure with your foot on the main brake pedal than you can with the parking brake.
Almost all drum rear brakes are self-adjusting, and operating the parking brake or braking when backing up will cause them to adjust.
When you have parent with a semi-circular driveway that requires no backing up and they fail to use the emergency brake often enough, then “self-adjusting” becomes a pretty worthless feature. I had to adjust the rear brakes on my parents’ cars every 18 months or so because they were too set in their ways.