Emergency Brake
 

hey guys, worried about my ebrake. should this thing stop the car when going down the road at 30, 40, 50 mph. mine barely slows it down. I know how to adjust it, but just curious if your's all work great.

I've lubed, adjusted and set it short of already being engaged to a small degree....


any tricks?

thanks.

Not really but it should hold the car on a hill or incline. If you yank it hard at speed you may be able to lock up rears to slide the rear around but just gradually pulling it will only barely work.

good to know, because thats what it does.

I thought it was for emergencies and should stop the car!!! lol...seeing as I did all the custom brakes and rebuilt the calipers and made the lines etc......just would like a backup plan!!!!

It holds the car fine on inclines etc....it's solid when stopped, I was hoping in could be an actual ebrake if something failed.

in case of an emergency, the e-brake WILL slow the car to a stop. the regular braking system uses hydraulic pressure to multiply the pressure applied at the pedal. the e-brake is operated by cable and can't supply nowhere near the same pressure to the rear drum brakes. and too this is relying strictly on the rear drums to stop the car. but like tim said, and dependent on how they're adjusted, they can lock the rear wheels if u pull up hard enough on the handle. i have mine adjusted so that it uses no more than half it's travel.

it's a 1980 with 2nd gen brakes......so there's some mod's there in the linkage. spent a good amount of time setting up and adjusting...just glad to hear (I guess) it's not just me. It slows it down, but if the brakes went out the ebrake would not prevent an accident.

Even modern car ebrakes work this well or don't. Ebrakes have never been intended as a full function backup to the regular braking mechanism. The better term to use is parking brake, which is what it is. Not sure where the ebrake terminology first crept in but it gives a false impression that these will work in an emergency which, as you found out, they really won't, not very well.

the term emergency brake came from back in the day when they were foot operated. u stomp it and it would lock the rear wheels every time.

I checked the FSM. In a Mazda RX-7 it's called a parking brake.

You use the parking brake when you park the car.

The emergency brake on an RX-7 is the hydraulic system, calipers and pads.

In an emergency it will stop the car if properly maintained.

They sure are fun though for sliding around on dirt roads 😝. At least from what I remember from my first rx7 back in 83!

Keeping in mind that these are 30+ year old cables, you probably want to avoid yanking on the parking brake handle for fun. As everybody noted here, it's designed to hold the car in place when you park, when the brake pads or shoes will not be subjected to high heat from trying to slow the car down from speed. If used properly, the parking brake won't wear your pads substantially.

Drift cars that require rear braking force AT SPEED usually have a separate brake hydraulic mechanism on that handle beside the shifter, and sometimes even have separate rear brake calipers to effect this force. Recognize that this is an extreme use situation and designed only for racing - as it would be too cost prohibitive to duplicate the brake system on every car when 100% brake failures are truly a rare thing in cars - even from the 80's.

On my -SE, the parking brake won't significantly affect braking at speed and that's with 10.2" vented rotors and HAWK pads. I would expect about the same performance from drums given the larger swept area of brake shoes vs. pads..