Recently my emergency brake has been seizing when it gets really cold (North Dakota). As a result my rear calipers won't let go of the wheel and I had to drive across town on icy roads with a wheel locked. Try getting a tow on New Year's Eve... christ.

Anyway, the first time i happen I had it looked at and they replaced my passenger side caliper ($243 bill). Now it happens again and they replace the other side ($243 bill). I pick up the car and the cable is seized up again (-15*F outside). They pulled it in and put a heater on it, the cable let go and I was off.

How common is this?

How long should calipers last (2001 RD2, 80k miles)?

What do I need to do to keep them from going bad?

How do you tell when a caliper is no good? They showed me there but I really didn't know what I was looking at.

 

its not the calipers, its the ebrake cables. you need to replace those, they are about 60 fromt he dealer if i remember correctly.

 

My does that also its happened to me the past 2 years when it gets below freezing. I bet it has to do with moisture in the cable line itself. Ive just learned to park my car in gear and not use it. Although im screwed if i want to warm my car up before taking off if im parked on an incline.

 

it's probably the cable

i had similar problem

 

I remember this being talked about last winter. basically a lot of cars freeze the ebrake cable in winter. a lot of people would recomend not to park with the ebrake in winter.

 

yep, my ebrake froze one time too. ruined the hell out of my rear brake pad because it took me a while to figure out what it was.

the earlier the better.

 

same this happened to me. Except since then the cable locked so bad that i had to cut them and now I have no E-Brake. Gotta park with my car in gear and not on to steep of a hill. Oh and it royally sucks when its cold out and I want to warm up my car and i can't because it has to stay in gear...Sitting in a freezing car for 15 minutes is not exactly fun.

By the way does anyone know how much the e-brake lines cost?

 

^^^ It was mentioned above that it's like $60 for a replacement cable.

Yeah, that same B/S happened to me for the first time. I went to start the car and let it warm up, and then when i went to release the ebrake i noticed that it had loads of play in it. Sure enough the rear brakes were locked up. the only thing i could do was to find a patch of NON icey or snowy road and let the traction of the tire catch. as soon as that happened the rear brakes would give and the wheels on the bus go round and round... cool.gif

i'm going to do some looking around to try and pinpoint what would cause something like this, and it will maybe have to wait till next winter when it's doing it again to prove exactly what it is, but i doubt it's the caliper.

 

chances are it is with the rubber boot that "protects" the cable where it leaves the sleeve and goes to the caliper. It is not water tight and will allow moisture into the cable sleeve to freeze.

One of mine had rusted solid and snapped the cable there.

 

remember reading something in a past topic that spraying wd-40 or similar into or on those boots to get rid of the problem

i have the same problem and i cant get into my garage till later this week to give it a shot,

have a remote starter for winter but cant lift my e-brake up to put it in ready mode hense why i cant leave it in gear

so have to park on level ground and just put the e-brake up 1 click, the snow helps cause the car wont roll anywhere smile.gif