Applying Handbreak - Press Release button or Not

barmonkey

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

When I saw the thread title, I thought this was going to be a discussion about whether people bother releasing their electronic parking brakes with the button, or simply go for the 'start accelerating and it'll release automatically' method.

I use the 'start accelerating and it'll release automatically' method, which is what it says to do in the hand book. The downside of the electronic handbrake is that I keep forgetting to put it on.

dannymccann

I was also taught to push the button in, so I do, however I rarely use the handbrake. Here in Lincoln the roads are so flat you can just gently roll to a stop in traffic with little chance of it going anywhere.

I always park in gear as well, extremely rare to find the hand brake on when I get back into my car if I've been driving. However this stems from having an Astra where the handbrake would stick on in the winter! I had to drive a few miles with the handbrake engaged before it would release - no mechanic locally could figure out why it did it :rotfl:

Car_54

dannymccann wrote: »

I was also taught to push the button in, so I do, however I rarely use the handbrake. Here in Lincoln the roads are so flat you can just gently roll to a stop in traffic with little chance of it going anywhere.

I always park in gear as well, extremely rare to find the hand brake on when I get back into my car if I've been driving. However this stems from having an Astra where the handbrake would stick on in the winter! I had to drive a few miles with the handbrake engaged before it would release - no mechanic locally could figure out why it did it :rotfl:

Are you aware that it's an offence to leave a vehicle parked without applying the handbrake?

jellie

dannymccann wrote: »

Here in Lincoln the roads are so flat you can just gently roll to a stop in traffic with little chance of it going anywhere.

Even on Lindum Road, Bunkers Hill, Steep Hill, Pelham Bridge, Danesgate, Victoria Street, The Avenue, to name just a few? I wouldn't be stopping on any of those without using a handbrake.

codeX

Thanks for the responses everyone..

I guess I'll keep pressing the release button when applying the handbreak and then push it up/down a notch to make sure that it's applied. Also, I'll always leave it in gear for added safety.

Cheers..

BeenThroughItAll

Funny how people worry about 'wearing out' a 1/8" or greater thickness steel ratchet, but don't worry about the self-adjusting ratchet on the handBRAKE mechanism itself.

Why driving instructors persist in teaching pupils to push the damn button in when pulling the handBRAKE on is beyond me - any wear caused by not doing so is on the lower side of the ratchet rack and the upper side of the pawl. The 'working' parts of the ratchet mechanism are untouched.

codeX

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

handBRAKE

Thanks... :beer:

BeenThroughItAll

codeX wrote: »

Thanks... :beer:

All part of the service

Zandoni

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Funny how people worry about 'wearing out' a 1/8" or greater thickness steel ratchet, but don't worry about the self-adjusting ratchet on the handBRAKE mechanism itself.

Why driving instructors persist in teaching pupils to push the damn button in when pulling the handBRAKE on is beyond me - any wear caused by not doing so is on the lower side of the ratchet rack and the upper side of the pawl. The 'working' parts of the ratchet mechanism are untouched.

I disagree, there will be wear on the tip of the ratchet. Picking people up on their spelling is much more important though.

Joe_Horner

Wear is in the form of rounding off the tips of the segment teeth and the pawl, plus wear of the pawl pivot casing it to "oval" because it's concentrated over a small angular movement .

The pawl will take the worst of it because, if your handbrake takes an average 5 clicks, it'll get 5x the wear on its tip as individual teeth will. As the pivot wears it'll also tend to wear the edge of the pawl at an angle, reducing its ability to latch.

The self-adjuster ratchets don't operate anything like as often as the handbrake does - maybe 100 or so "clicks" over the lifetime of a set of shoes - and tend to fail regularly anyway. They also don't "hold" position by force on the ratchet, as the handbrake does. The ratchet simply operates a screw adjuster and is under no load except when it's taking up the next notch. Even so, they're nasty, unreliable, inventions that often need replacing as often as the shoes do.