weak parking brake ?

[mfn1194]

I recently had rear brakes and rotors put on, as well as a 40K mile servicing.

I notice on the loaner they gave me ('05) and my car, that parking break is not able to hold the car in place on a hill ?

has anyone else with auto trans noticed this ? should i bring it back and ask them to make it "tighter" ?

'03 G35 sedan

[initiald711]

you could blame it on them,i would especially since you paid for them.it is a simple adjustment,just have to remove the rear wheels

[C-Kwik]

The parking brake was fairly weak when I had first got my G. The parking brake itself is quite small. It doesn't need to be very big, but based on what I tried and the results I got, I am speculating that a possible reason for the weak brake is that the brake shoe (the G35 uses an integrated drum brake for the parking brake) has a very small contact area. In addition, since the parking brake is not normally used by most people, the brake shoe is also not bedded to the rotor which results in a lower coefficient of friction at the points of contact. I ended up driving up and down the street with the parking brake slightly engaged to generate enough friction to sligtly wear the contact point to giv a broader contact point and bed the shoe into the drum surface. After this, the parking brake worked significantly better for me. It still required me to pull the brake lever up quite a bit (I had a 6MT), but it held much better.

As for adjustment, there is no need as the parking brake, like every other parking brake out there is self adjusting. If the parking brake is engaging too high (or low for the Auto transmission), then simply engage the parking brake as far is it will go several times. This should jack the parking brake into place.

[initiald711]

it is supposed to self adjust but i have had them come in rattleing cuz they didnt self adjust.i like the bedding in process you mention,never thought of it but makes sense.i canonly assume what i did made the customer happy since they didnt return with the same complaint