I've gutted the interior of my car. I can clearly see the e-brake cable. Has anyone adjusted their brake from inside? My brakes barely engage with the handle pulled all the way up. Maybe I can access the adjustment by removing the bracket that is circled in red?

get under the car

That parking brake lever should be self adjusting. The lever shouldn't be able to go vertical with average pulling strength. I would be investigating the brake cable attachment mechanism at the brake caliper or drum. If the cable has adjusted itself all the way up then it might be time for a new cable.

That style ebrake lever isn't self adjusting. The design changed somewhere later in production. That's the early design with a threaded shaft under the car.

1982-1989 center cable - adjustable


1990-92 E-brake lever - self adjusted

Thanks. I’ll start installing the new carpet. I’ll work on the e-brake another time.

To add to this question. On my 90 gta the parking park barely holds the car when fully pulled up. (actually doesn't) If it is self adjusting any ideas on what to look for to get it working better.
TIA
Bob

Not sure what rear brakes you have but best place is to look at where the parking brake cable attaches to the rear brake and make sure it (the mechanism) moves when you pull the parking brake lever. Next make sure that the parking brake mechanism for the rear brakes is properly adjusted to there is no slack, there should as little clearance as possible between the relaxed state and just starting to engage. The parking brake mechanisms for our cars are really pretty simple once you look at them.

Thanks. It has been this way for a long time and I have just tolerated it. Time to fix since I am starting to drive it more.
I will dig out the workshop and manual and give it a go.

Mine had become nearly useless a while back and I discovered what had happened was that the steel cable inside had rusted itself to the collars on the rear of the cable. When I lived in Illinois I would put away for winter and it must have happened then. IrReplaced the cable and worked great.

A few things... The self adjuster is powered by a spring, and a ratcheting pawl. If the spring gets unhooked, it won't tension. If you YANK up on the handle violently, you can easily 'outrun' the locking pawl. When that happens the cable doesn't start pulling tight until the pawl catches, and so however far the lever travels before it catches is just wasted throw.

It's also more than a little common for the ebrake cables to come out of the stamped steel guides in the trans tunnel. When they're not in the guides the cables won't pull tight.

There is also a preload grub screw on the PBR calipers that may need to be adjusted for the e-brake to function.

Thanks All
I'll have to wait a while. It is supposed to be in the triple digits this week and maybe more coming along. Of course with it being that hot I don't go aside much anyway.
Have a great week.

This intrigues me, I want to believe you, but I am not sure how that would work? I remember the set screw, but I think it is just a stop for the lever, so it can't overtravel when you're releasing the brake.
I put the PBRs on my 9 bolt in my 92 and I have a strange issue where on the first pull of the brake handle it goes up, maybe 7-8 clicks and doesn't really hold the car. If I then release it and re-set, the handle only goes up 2-4 clicks. Still doesn't hold the car great, but if I REALLY pull it, like 2 more clicks it will finally hold the car better. As far as I can tell, the PBR setup works by "walking" the one part over the other and basically causing the pad to be crooked in relation to the rotor surface and the lever just has a pivot point that is non-adjustable

If you have more info on that I would like to see it, maybe that is my problem. If not, I'll grab my factory '90, 91, or 92 manual one night and look for what you're talking about

Me? Have documentation? Crazy talk.

To give credit where it's due, I'm sure I saved this off of here in the past. I just moved things around a little to make it suit my OCD.




You'll want to save it and open it locally, or right click view image to get a fullsize look that can be read.

nope crawl under job

Cool, saved for sure. I think those are the instructions that came in my PBR rebuild kit, which is way more comprehensive than the generic kits out there.

And now that I have re-read it three times, I think this will do exactly what you said it would, I was thinking it was on the opposite side of the caliper

Yeah I think that's where they came from... PDFs that probably came from JamesC. I just rotated a few degrees, and cropped/cut/pasted the adjustment procedure and diagram into a single image. I won't know for sure until I get the Green Firebird back together, but it looks like the only manual adjustment in the system.

More pics!

I never messed with the grub screw when I tore it all down, so it was what the "factory set" it.

Hopefully that helps my issue. Have to fix the 9 bolt first though.