1964-1974 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Your rear brakes may be too tight. You're supposed to be able to pull up the lever about four clicks before they take hold.
Why would they be too tight? Here's a guess: Surprisingly how many Sonett owners don't realize that the rear brakes have to be adjusted manually (the fronts, being discs, are self-adjusting.) The brake adjustment is easy to do (once you've bought the required square socket) -- you just jack up the car, pump the pedal a few times to center the brake shoes, turn the adjuster until the wheel locks, then back it off a few notches until the wheel spins freely. It's a good idea to check this every 6000 miles or less (I do it every time I change the oil.)
Adjusting the rear brakes takes care of the parking-brake adjustment automatically, since the parking brake acts on the same brake shoes. BUT... what happens sometimes is that somebody forgets to adjust the rear brakes, then notices that the parking brake doesn't hold any more. He whips out a socket and tightens up the cable adjusting nuts at the base of the brake lever. That makes the parking brake work... but later, when he (or somebody else) remembers to adjust the rear shoes, now the parking brake cables are too tight and won't release all the way.
So, get your rear brake shoes adjusted correctly, then back off the parking-brake cable nuts until you can pull up the lever 3-4 clicks before the brakes take hold. Now your regular rear brakes AND your parking brake should be adjusted correctly, and you won't need to fiddle with the cable nuts again.
BTW, you really don't want to forget to adjust the rear shoes, because if they get loose then the front brakes are doing all the work! The fronts normally provide about 70% of the stopping power anyway, so it's surprisingly easy to let the rears gradually drift out of adjustment without noticing anything is wrong except that the parking brake doesn't hold as well as it used to...
posted by 204.76.1...
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