Hondas rolling away.....

Get it fixed or this could happen..

this is ridiculous.

1. my 89 civic doesn't even /have/ an interlock, and nor did countless millions of others of that era and before. should they be recalled and retrofitted? [rhetorical]

1. why the FUCK should a car company be liable for a recall for idiots not using the parking brake? what next - car manufacturer liability for drivers running red lights?

2. my grandmother's crown vic's interlock has /never/ worked. i spoke with her mechanic about fixing it and his response was to disconnect it because frod's "always have that problem". frod have never been subject to a recall on this issue that i can remember.

the whole thing stinks.

No it doesn't. Like seat belts, airbags, hydraulic brakes, safety glass ... a working interlock is justifiably mandated by federal law and none, not a one of them, "stink" and they all inarguably have saved, and continue to save lives.

"inarguably"???? so how do interlocks save lives on stick-shift cars then bud? or are stick drivers not retarded enough to need uncle sam standing over them if they don't use the parking brake?

and why aren't frod subject to the same recall???

oh, and don't worry about the logical disconnect between "justifiable" and "mandated by federal law".

If you're that incapable (as you've provided proof positive) of grasping the conspicuous, far be it from me to attempt to spoonfeed a poseur with an obvious truth which wouldn't begin to flummox even a retarded 10 year old in a hurry.

hmm, so since you're so informed and anxious to impart your enlightenment, why don't you let us all know how this run-away problem is [very effectively] addressed on big-rigs?

hint: it addresses driver retardation, mechanical failure, and gets to the root of the issue - i.e. doesn't have a single point of weakness.

Right, given that every conceivable eventuality cannot be prevented with 100% certainty, no efforts whatso- ever should be taken toward prevention of the likely or forseeable. You're truly an idiot of the first order.

there are two shift levers on big rigs to get through the shitload of gears I take it

in interlock defense i should say i got out of habit of using parking brakes in favor of parking in 1st gear primarily because you could find your pads frozen to the disk on a cold morning

iow, /you/ can't foresee it.

fortunately for the rest of the world, big rigs are equipped with air brakes, which, unlike light trucks and passenger vehicles, use a "fail safe" brake design. any failure in the system applies the brakes to maximum. when operating, air in the pneumatic brake lines holds the brakes in the "off" position, and braking is achieved by lessening the hold-off pressure. depressurization from failures applies the brakes to any wheel/axle/trailer/unit so affected. and the parking brake simply depressurizes so all wheels are locked. transmission locking is completely irrelevant.

yup, i'm wasting my time with someone who neither has a clue nor a desire to get one.

nope, air brakes. see other post.

sure, but that depends on vehicle. one of the advantages of drum parking brakes is that, unless you've been through standing water, they're rarely affected.

You're the very epitomy of the concept of the supercilious, pretentious poseur and kidding absolutely nobody with the possible exception of yourself.

Unless of course you're parking, in an uphill orientation against an actual curb, if by "drivers turned the wheels to the curb" you're referring to the correct method of the front and not the back of the front wheel.

And the sky is blue during clear, daytime hours.

you like working the drums?

from what I gathered if you smother everything in antiseize compound subsequent servicing becomes easier. never having serviced ones i've got to ask cause i have them on the ass of my fiat beater

i don't "like" drums, but they're very practical when it comes to parking brakes. that's why many manufacturers now use a disk/drum hybrid on rears. disk on the outside for linear service brake operation, drum on the inside for effective reliable parking.

yup, use antiseize. but don't "smother". use the bare minimum that'll still smear once you've scraped the rust off.

for rust removal, use a scraper with a good flat edge, not abrasive. you want to keep the surfaces planar.

Red herring.

***************************** I think it's certainly either the putrid smell of the pretense or the risible logic in your post that you're detecting.

-----

- gpsman

Drum brakes are kind of a drag to work on because there's more parts and everything is held in place with springs. Sometimes the springs can be ornery to install. OTOH, I used to have a VW that replaced the brake adjustment hardware with a simple spring loaded wedge. It was easier to work on than a disk system. Too bad all the other cars that I've had never had this system.

The dirty little secret is that disks don't really work great as parking brakes. My Hyundai has rear disks and a tiny drum brake which it uses for the parking brakes. The truth is that tiny drum brakes don't work that great either as parking brakes. That's the breaks, I guess.

My '72 Fiat 124s had disk brakes in the rear. This was pretty advanced for the time. The amazing thing about this is that modern disk parking brakes use the same method of preventing the rotor from being pushed into the caliper when using the parking brakes. It's the reason you have to screw the pistons in the rear brakes. As far as I know it's a Fiat design.

In the flatlands a parking brake might not ever be used. With cars that use parking brake activated rear drum adjusters, the rear brakes soon becomes useless. I didn't discover this until I noticed I was replacing front pads too often on my '88 Celebrity. I never trust parking brakes when jacking up a car, and chock it. If I lived where there are hills I'd pay more attention to parking brakes. The only time I even thought about them when was I found out they adjusted the Celebrity brakes, and when I found out my kid was using them in the Corsica to do donuts.

Too bad people like to build cities in non-flat areas.

The self-adjusters on drum brakes don't work a lot of the times. I guess that's the big advantage of disk brakes - they're self adjusting. Sometimes they even lock. :-)

I once parked my Fiat without putting it in gear or setting the parking brake at my dad's house. I get a call from the cops asking me if I owned that car and I say "yeah, it's out in the front" and when I glance out the window, it was gone. That was pretty embarrassing. It rolled down the street which has a slight incline, missed all the cars on the street and stopped about 3 feet from the corner of the neighbor's new wall. I lucked out that time. This was a lesson to put the car in gear and set the brakes. Those kinds of lessons are pretty effective.

Another good reason to use the parking brake regularly is that by doing so, the driver is not only kept abreast of its condition (including adjustment), but that also lessens the possibility of the mechanism (such as the cable) binding, thereby keeping it operational when actually needed.