I recently swapped to a GSL rear end, the brakes work fine but the parking brake doesn't. I have the new parking brake cables, there is tension in handbrake when I pull up, but it doesn't engage the brakes. The mechanism where the cable pulls on the brake seems to be pretty hard to rotate. Is there something in that part that could be adjusted/replaced to make it turn? Not sure if this happened from the previous owner, but I read if you tried to push the caliper in instead of turn it in, that could mess up the parking brake (but I don't know why)

 

There's an adjustment in the parking brake handle.

 

That's the first thing I adjusted. I had it to the point where it wouldn't pull up at all, now it is set to take around 4 clicks to be tight. But still not pulling the brakes tight. It might also be the bracket the cable goes into at the caliper. It looks warped and not square. Anyone have a picture of that?

 

Here's a screenshot from a video, apologies not the best quality. But you can see where the cable goes into the ebrake bell crank.

I suggest you remove the cable from the bracket and then see if you can turn the crank with a set of channel locks etc. The crank should move easily until you reach the end of about 45° of travel IIRC and then you would feel it compressing the pad against the rotor. It should spring back easily as well.

If that bell crank is tight from the get go, well there's yer problem

If those move freely on each side, then maybe your cable is "frozen", rusted in place.

 

^^^ Good advice there! The arm the cable pulls on is attached to a shaft that is supported/rides on a pair of needle bearings similar to pilot bearing for transmission. At the factory the whole p/brake mechanism housed beneath the black boot with spring clamp is packed with an orange grease both to lubricate the parts and reduce possibility of corrosion from water,dirt intrusion if boot is compromised. Have seen some of these calipers packed with grease and some with not so much..if rear end sat for awhile somewhere damp or p/brake wasn't used much,it's possible the arm is seized to bearing rollers. May be able to free up with some back and forth motion,likely will need removal and disassembly to determine nature of problem. Complete sealkit still available,can be seen on Mazdatrix website. A pic of an unassembled rear caliper from my SE during overhaul shows most of what's inside and some of the sealkit.

 

your picture brings back baaad memories!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks for all the info and pictures. I was able to break them loose and packed them full of grease. The guts appeared to be good still, only a little rust on the outside. Also, the brackets that the parking brake sits in with the 2 nuts to keep it in place were bad (I'm guessing they weren't the original because they didn't look like that one in the picture). Made new ones out of angle iron to match the lengths of the new cables. Now everything seems to be working.

 

lol,done a lot of these over the years. They do require some "patience" for a complete overhaul.

 

Good going!