removing or relocating emergency brake handle

It's just a cable... you should be able to relocate it easily. Any junkyard will have dozens of different setups to choose from, sitting in the vehicle that hosted them. Find one you like and work from there... the handle cable goes underneath, then gets split into two with a yoke, where it then goes to each back wheel. That makes this system easily adaptable from one vehicle to another.

That said, you take your life into your hands when you go changing factory setups, especially with something as critical as a brake system. Standard disclaimer applies. __ Steve .

My old '89 YJ had the e-brake on the floor. Must be a way to relocate it somehow- maybe parts from a YJ would do it?

Your first mistake is in referring to them as Emergency Brakes, they are Parking Brakes.

No, there is no way to move them unless you have fabrication skills that will let you mount a foot operated parking brake in tghe very tight footwells of your TJ.

Finally, the parking brake system is mechanical. It is operated by cables, not hydraulics, so if the hydraulic system fails, there is a mechanical back up. Since there is no way to keep pressure in the hydraulic system when your foot isn't there, then we need the parking brake and its ratchet mechanism to keep the brakes holding when nobody is there.

Maybe it's a 'parking brake' down south, but you 'sure' don't want to use it for that up here. Put it on in the winter and you vehicle stays parked until spring....

It is an 'emergency' brake for when your main brakes fail. Then you have a mechanical backup.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

Jeff Strickland wrote:

I agree with Jeff - they are much too weedy to be an effective "emergency brake", and as they only operate on the rear wheels, can spin you around in the wet.

Dave

Dave Milne, Scotland '99 TJ Sahara

Jesus Mike, it isn't ALWAYS 45 below 0 in Canada.

I guess you guys have never had a MC fail?

I have and believe me it is an 'emergency' brake and works quite well at it.

Mike

Dave Milne wrote:

Yeppers. It's both.

Parking brakes are more for standard trannies since autos have parking pawls. Although it is recommended to use the parking brake on slopes even if you have an auto.

As pointed out before.. use them in real cold weather and you may be stuck for a while.. a long while..

The first thing you should do when the brakes fail is pump the brakes, that can give you enough pressure to stop. Next is shift down in gears and let the engine/tranny slow you down. Then the emergency brake but make sure your going straight or the ends are going to swap places.

(of course on a nice iced parking lot, the emergency brake can also be called a wahoo lever) :)

I know, I know, only for 8 months or so.... ;-)

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

true !

Dave

Dave Milne, Scotland '99 TJ Sahara

I concur. Had the MC fail in an old Toyota as we were approaching a stop light with several cars already stopped. It locked the back wheel up, but we stopped with about a foot to spare. Would have seriously smacked the back of those cars had we not had it.

The emergency / parking brake is also good for making speed reductions without the rear brake lights coming on... For this, one should keep the thumb release depressed the entire time so that you can control how much braking action is applied without the brake lever locking... Since most of your braking action is from the front wheels, you don't slow down all that quickly though...

Yes, but...

When the MC or Master Cylinder fails, the pedal has this nasty tendency to fall to the floor.

Breaking a brake line is a different animal.

Mike

"L.W.(ßill) Hughes III" wrote:

On or about Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Grumman-581 of snipped-for-privacy@DIE-SPAMMER-SCUM.ho...:

Or for making really cool 180 degree turns in the Batmobile.

Lee "Always thought that men in shiny tights were kinda silly, really." Ayrton

It is not usually the -40 weather that causes trouble. It is too cold to have any free liquid splashing around.

It is the closer to O F freezing and slushy roads that are the killer. The slush splashes up and freezes solid over night.

I worked in garages in the slush belt and had a lot of service calls for that as well as have seen a pile of burned out, literally, back brakes.

I have even had it happen twice to me when I lent my vehicle to someone else and they brought it back with cooked brakes.

It happened to a TJ from here on our last Jan run. He damn near slid off a cliff before we figured out what was going on, real lucky, he slid off the trail on the high side first, and then was crabbing to the drop off when we clued in. We were like 50 feet from the camp.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's