Rear Caliper / Ebrake Woes

[BuudWeizErr]

My ebrake decided it didn't want to lock up the rear tires anymore. It didn't do this overnight, I just don't think I noticed because I was clutch kicking so much, but now that I'm trying to combine the two, pulling the ebrake does pretty much nothing other than slow me down very slowly. It locks enough to keep the rears from moving when it's parked, but not when I'm driving.

One of my friends said to get new rear calipers... my car has 225k on it, and they are probably OEM. So I did, same ****, just piston seems to engage smoother now. I'm sure I needed new rears, but I was assuming this would fix my locking problems. I have Axis pads, xdrilled/slotted brembos on the rear. And I've tightened that bolt on the actual ebrake assembly, none of this does any good.

Now granted, I went from S14 SE's with 205/55/16's to 17x9 with 215/45/17's, but one of my friends has the same size wheels and tires with stock brakes and autozone pads and he initiates with ebrake no problem.

Any ideas? And no, I don't want Z32 rear assembly. It's not a problem of me not feinting hard enough or not pulling hard enough. I can feint hard as hell and the ebrake won't do anything. I've also tried putting a spacer on my ebrake cable in case it was stretched... same thing.

any ideas? Chet? Alan? Bueller?

[Dori Dori]

Did they ever lock up with those pads? Reason I ask is that when I switched to HP+ pads in the rear, they didn't lock up like the HPS's did. I went back to HPS, and viola, they lock again. My assumption was that I couldn't heat up the rears enough to get that initial bite...HPS operate at lower temps. Also, maybe when the cable gets stretched enough times, it becomes more flexible...i'm sure you can easily source an un-abused ebrake cable pretty cheaply and try that. Just some guesses. Good luck.

[BuudWeizErr]

yeah, they used to lock up like madmen. I learned to drift using the ebrake, but stopped using it when I learned to clutch kick correctly.

[Exar-Kun]

if its same brake pads, calipers are good..I'd wager thers some give in the cable.

Get a new cable(you have a drift knob, right?) and try it out...

That'd be my best guess....other than that, if the pads are too worn it may travell a bit more before locking up..but thats just conjecture.

-chet