Subaru parking brake button repair?

Hi,

The parking brake button on our our '97 Subaru Outback fell off. This apparently happened awhile ago, but my wife never told me about. In any event, we don't have the button itself at this point.

We took the car in for service, and asked how much it would cost to repair, and they quoted $325!! They claimed that they had to replace the entire handbrake assembly ("ratchet").

Anyway, I told the dealer to not do the repair, and started searching for info on fixing it myself.

I found the following NG thread:

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I think I have a collection of such wirenuts, so I want to try this, but before doing this, I have a question:

The procedure in the above thread says to pull the lever up. If, for some reason, I can't get the wirenut onto the rod, i.e., so still no button, how will we be able to then release the handbrake?

I have this image in my brain of getting half way through this repair, and then having the handbrake stuck :(...

Thanks in advance, Jim

Reply to
ohaya
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Had you considered a handbrake from a wrecking yard? Also, post this at

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- someone there may have an old handbrake, and someone may have made the same repair.

Carl

Reply to
Carl 1 Lucky Texan

Hi,

For the record, I was able to get a yellow wirenut onto the shaft inside the lever, so we have at least a temporary fix. I've posted on that

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forum to see if anyone knows where I can buy a "genuine" replacement button?

Thanks, Jim

Reply to
ohaya

Hi,

I forgot to mention that the procedure in the post that I linked to above is exactly right. In particular, at first, it looked like the wirenut fit all right without having to alter it at all, but when I got it threaded onto the shaft/rod inside the lever, the button wouldn't budge at all. I kind of panicked at that point, because, obviously, I couldn't release the brake.

I went back to the post, and read it again, and took a small pair of wire cutters, and trimmed about 1/16" off the "mouth" of the wirenut. I then put the spring (which we hadn't lost) back in, and threaded the trimmed wirenut onto the shaft, and VOILA, we had a working parking brake button again :)!!

I still would like to replace the wirenut with a standard button, so if anyone knows where I can get one, pls post back.

Thanks, Jim

Reply to
ohaya

Yes, the same thing happened to me. I had found that it was impossbile to buy just the button, you had to buy the whole assembly for US $140.

I was able to fabricate a replacement that was undetectable. Fortunately a neigbor has a lathe in his basement. So it took about an hour's worth of my time to do this. This was about 4 years ago. I traded the car in for a new Subaru and noone was the wiser.

Oh, and the problem is a defect in the button assembly. I use the parking brake to park all the time so it gets a lot of use. If, like most nowadays, you use it just for emergencies, it will probalby never fail.

Al

Al

Reply to
Al

Al,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Do you (or does anyone else) know if, with the standard button, can you just unscrew it from the lever? It looked like there were threads at the end of the shaft.

The reason I'm asking is that if I can't a 'new' button, I may go check a local junkyard, and pull a button from there. Someone else had posted about going to a junkyard, but I thought they meant to go pull the entire assembly. If I can just remove the button easily and replace it with another one, that's a repair I can probably handle :)...

Thanks, Jim

Reply to
ohaya

If I remember correctly, it just unscrewed. I searched through my spare parts bin until I found a nut that had the same thread. I soldered the nut to a brass rod I had. I removed the guts from the plastic button. then I milled the rod/nut assembly down so it fit the plastic button. I epoxied the whole thing together. Now the tricky part was to install the assembly back onto the threaded shaft. I affixed some masking tape to the shaft so I could hold it in position. It was thin enough so I could pull it out after I had screwed on the button. After little swearing and sweat, I succeeded. I was able to do this without removing the parking brake from the car.

Now I wish I had photographed the replacement I had made. I didn't realize that it would be so useful. I did post the info on the job about

4 years ago on this web site. So you might he able to find it.

As it is, I think my mind did a reset on this problem as I didn't think it would repeat for me, at any rate.

Al

Reply to
Al

replying to Al, Joseph Morris wrote: I realize this is ten years later, but this is the top Google hit for "Subaru handbrake repair." Additional information: the threaded rod is m5x.08 (i.e., 5mm with 0.8 thread pitch). I had a broken-in-half button and was able to remove the center of the button (dremel with carbide cutter bit), put a threaded aluminum sleeve into it with two-part epoxy and thread it back on. At my local Ace Hardware I could only find 10-32 aluminum sleeve but tapped it out ($5 Irwin tap also at Ace) to m5x0.8.

Reply to
Joseph Morris

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