I changed to hawk pads months ago, and noticed the brake hardware in the rear was rather loose. I went to change the clips out today, put everything back together, and took the FD for a spin. My brakes are dragging. Took the wheels back off and disconnected the e-brake cable. Drove again and everything was fine. How do I adjust the e-brake cable to it's a little looser so it doesn't actuate my rear brakes?

 

Bump

 

My buddy and I were havig this problem too. If you trace the e-brake cable back to the actual ebrake. You will see it goes from each wheel and then joins to a single cable...If you are under the car looking up. It's above the MP or right around there....Then the single cable runs to the e-brake...I am almost sure you have to adjust it where the two cables meet. We were too lazy and left it disconnected

 

I'll get it when I replace the cat if it's going to take that. I hardly drive the car anyway.

 

you can adjust the e-brake from inside the car. under the center console (right behind the ebrake) there are 2 screws that control the adjustment. back them out a bit and you should be good to go.

 

Before bothering with adjusting the ebrake be certain you retracted the pistons completely. I doubt it's your ebrake adjustment.

 

Piston was retracted fully. The e-brake cable is disconected. Brakes no longer drag. I would like to have my e-brake in the near future.

 

When I did my brakes last weekend the pads were so close to the rotor that I couldn't imagine they aren't dragging, but I retracted the piston as much as possible and didn't notice any problems in my test drive. How did you know that they were dragging? Do they make noise or severely slow down the car?

 

I always pull forward or back up very slowly and see if the car coasts a few inches smoothly before coming to a stop. If that checks out then drive around the block a time or two and get out and feel the wheel centers with the palm of your hand. If any of them are hot the pads on that corner are dragging.

 

Cool, I'll have to try feeling the center of the wheels. I know it rolled easily because I almost crashed into a bmw suv on my first test drive. I forgot to pump the brakes once the car was on and moving, luckily a couple pumps and everything was fine.

My front pads had some visible space between them and the rotor, but the rears were almost touching the rotor. My only previous brake experience is on bicycle pads where there is always alot of clearance between pad and rim, I just assumed the rotor on a car was more "true" than that of a bike so they needed less clearance.