Emergency Brake Problem

So I got my car almost a year ago, used, from a friend. It's a 2003 Liberty and it's a manual and the parking brake has not worked since and I am just now getting to look at it (I know, kinda late). I don't know that much about cars so bear with me, I might get some things wrong.

For the whole time I thought the problem was the cable, but when I lift the lever up, I can see movement in the brakes, so that makes me think that the cable is still good. One of the shoes seems to move outward only a little bit, but the other shoe on the same wheel doesn't move at all. I looked around on the internet and found that there is a small gear-looking thing in the brakes. It said to turn it counter-clockwise to tighten the brakes, and I'm just assuming that's what I have to do. But I turned it multiple times and it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Do I need to turn the gear more? The other way? Not turn it at all? Or is it a completely separate problem?

Let me know if you need any more information.

Thanks!

The gear looking thing is a star wheel that should only turn one direction. This tightens the brake. You have to use a small screwdriver to disengage the piece of metal engaging the star wheel cogs to get it to turn the other way.

Raise the back end and put it on jackstands and raise the parking brake lever several clicks. Then adjust the star nuts while turning each rear wheel by hand until you feel slight resistance. If this doesn't get you close there's a piece under the center console where the cables come together and attach to the lever. The nuts attaching the cables allow some adjustment.

Thanks!

I started to tighten the star wheel on the right side of the car with the wheel off just to see if I could notice the shoe moving at all. It did seem to move outward slightly when I tightened the star wheel, but the other shoe on the same wheel still is not moving. I put the wheel back on and tried to rotate it and I had some resistance, but I wasn't sure how much resistance the wheel had before the shoe was tightened, so I compared it to the left wheel and it had small, but noticeably more resistance than the left wheel. I put the parking brake up and went to spin the right wheel, expecting it to not move, but it did. I could rotate it just with my hands even though the shoe was tighter.

Also, before I tried to adjust the brake with the star wheel, I opened up the center console to try and tighten it from there, but piece that connects the single cable from the parking brake handle to the two cables that go to each wheel didn't have nuts on them, just cylinder pieces that held it together. So I assumed that I wasn't able to adjust it from there.

same on the kj

Sephiroth said:

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Click to expand...

I have seen this video before and was trying to find it recently.

This definitely fixed my ongoing problem with the emergency brake on my 2002 Export Diesel! The brake was basically a joke...I had to keep my manual Jeep in gear when parking it and "emergency" brake? No way.

I fixed two small springs to pull the assembly forward as shown in the video and now the brake adjusts itself nicely!

I do not know if this would fix the OP's problem but this should be applied in any case!