Dodge neon hand brake tightening how to

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2005 Neon with rear drums had a mostly ineffective e-brake. The handle pulled up to its top stop with very little resistance. Felt like a stretched cable. Various sources indicate the handbrake has a self-adjusting mechanism, so I spent time in the drums, even though the service brake felt firm and happy, the sign of tightness and functionality back there.

Old shoes looked fine, the adjusters were free, and someone had put anti sieze inside so they'd work. I figured I had glazed shoes so I got new ones and a hardware kit. Blew it all apart, put it back together, same thing.

So I paid attention to the hand brake side of things. Console comes off easily. The E-brake lever has two ratchets, one for its self adjuster and one for the holdy-button. An "open mouthed" lever I call pac-man lands on a little metal rod, about 5/16" in diameter, whenever one lowers the handle all the way. On my car, at least, this resets the self-adjustment to nill.

For diagnostic purposes I put a vise grips on the semi-circle that pulls the cable, and used it to keep tension on the cable while I released the handle. I heard several slightly different-sounding clicks as this went down, the lever adjuster doing its job. I did NOT lower the handle all the way, and did NOT engage the Pac-Man lever with its rod. Having taken up some slack, I undid my vise grips and reapplied the e-brake, delightfully firmly, and running out of travel before running out of lever.

Put the lever down, accidentally letting pac-man hit its little tab, and all my work was erased.
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Well this is easy enough, I got my grinder out and "erased" this tab from my e-brake mechanism. Take note, the official fix would be buying a new handle doohickey from Dodge anyway, so there's nothing to lose. Pulled handle up, used vise grips to hold the cable, lowered a few clicks, released vise grips, done. If one were to overtension the cable accidentally, they can manually activate the Pac-Man and start over.

Hope this helps someone five years from now who stumbles on this on google.
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Most all advice reads "you should adjust your drum adjuster" which is valid but not the only thing.

Now that winter's coming, I can steer with the rear again.
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