Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera Parking Brake Cable Replacement: A Few Thoughts

The internet has brought a new dimension to shopping for car parts. It's now quite easy to find high quality parts for less than what you can get at the local store, and even better, parts that the local store doesn't have. The downsides are the price of shipping and the whole wait-around-without-a-car-while-it-ships problem.

In the case of the frozen brake on the ChevOldsmoBuiac, combined with the erstwhile failed Volvo brakes, meant that any part now was almost better than the best part later. Napa had a brake cable at a warehouse in town for $12.00 (instead of the Delco cable from Rockauto for $2). The Napa one was mine.

I again had to beat the brake drum off the shoes with the deadblow hammer. Not in a hurry like I was upon initial failure, I looked at the components and reflected. I just replaced these brake shoes and springs in 2009 (~20,000 miles ago, if that...), and the brake cylinders in 2007. It was hard to guess that from the layers of brake dust and rust. All the brake grease I had applied to the contact points was gone. I could see a little paint left on the springs and retainers in places. Nothing seemed ready to snap in spite of the degraded appearance, so I elected to keep the current brake hardware. I used fingernail polish to identify the front/back, and outward and inward facing orientation of the parts.

The first clue that the diagnosis was correct was that the parking brake cable wouldn't let go of the brake shoe. I'm fairly sure I've replaced the armature before, and it wasn't a huge struggle.

I ended up having to cut the brake cable at the load equalizer to get it to come out. This is the smoking gune photo. An un-frozen cable would slide out of the housing.

Comparison of the frozen and unfrozen cables.

Ditto for the equalizer end. The replacement cable had a loose retainer. In order to push it into the braket so it would snap, I had to grab the entire colar and retainer with a pair of vise-grips and pull it through. On the axle (equalizer) end, I had to remove the rubber washer to make enough clearance for it to snap in.

The equalizer is almost completely rusted. It consists of a retainer, a long threaded rod (swaged to the left parking brake cable), and a captured nut. By tightening the nut, it pulls on both the left and right parking brake cables. This sort of design is starting to look like a classic candidate for failure. The threaded rod rusts over, and even if the nut isn't rusted on, it won't engage the thread right, and start to strip or crossthread when used. The Volvo 740's accessory belt tensioners are all like this and have all been snapped. Fine threads+Time=Rust=Failure. Don't design cars this way. Or at least, use stainless steel for parts like this.

If I do a complete brake job again, I should replace the entire parking brake assemble from the pedal on. To create enough slack to put the lug in the retainer, and I had to manually pull the cable on each side (jamming one side with a pair of vice grips). That was a bear. Totally the brute force way out of the problem. You have to pull really hard just to get that extra 1/4" of slack.

I also noticed that the fuel lines are very very very corroded. Ever since the gas gauge went wonky, I've been thinking about pulling the tank and replacing the sender. I think the time to do that is drawing close.

PCV air filter for a 2.5L I4 Ciera. I've never pulled one before to check it, and from what I can tell, you'd never need to. Still flows after 22 years.