Last week I parked our Dodge B250 van on a steep hill, put the transmission in Neutral, and then applied the parking brake. Before putting the transmission in Park, I took my foot off the brake pedal to see if the parking brake held. It did not. There was some groaning from the rear and the van started creeping forward.

The parking brake cable starts at the parking brake handle or foot pedal, runs under the vehicle, and links to left and right cables attached to levers and springs inside the rear brakes. The typical parking brake cable is only about 1/8 inch (4 mm) thick. It has to keep the rear brake shoes (drum) or pads (disc) applied with enough force to restrain a heavy vehicle. The parking brake system has a Rube Goldberg feel to it, but it usually works surprisingly well.

The best way to maintain a parking brake system is to use it a lot. Don’t do what I did and wait until you are parked on the side of Mount Crumpit to find out if your parking brake is working and the cable length is properly adjusted. Use the parking brake and take some of the strain off of the $1000+ transmission and let the vehicle’s weight rest on the $20 rear brake shoes or pads.

The parking brake cable is exposed to salt, water, dirt, and who knows what underneath the car. The cable usually runs through a conduit, but that conduit is mostly meant to prevent abrasion rather than corrosion. Frequently using the parking brake helps keep the cable from rusting in place or otherwise freezing up. The right side parking brake cable and conduit on our Dodge van had rusted together. The left side cable still worked, but one set of brake shoes was not enough to hold back the van on the hill. Luckily I had a passenger to chock the wheels!