"Bob Falooley" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Dr_Dickie said:As a former automobile mechanic, yes your parking brakes should stop the
car
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:from moving FORWARD on a reasonable grade. Not true for backwards. This
is
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:due to the way the brake shoes are pulled into the drum (at least when I
worked on cars). Also, you will not FULLY engage the parking brakes if
you
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:leave your foot on the brake when engaging the parking brakes.
Make sure you are taking about forwards, and then try putting the
parking
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:brake on with your foot OFF of the brake pedal (the car in park of
course).
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Of course, all of this is based on your ability to judge a "reasonable"
grade of hill. Nothing I can do about that.I would hope my parking break will cover both forwards and backwards
motion.
Quoted message said:
Nope, don't work that way. Parking brakes, by the way they are designed,
work much, much better in forward than backward (for drum style brakes, not
sure about rear disc style parking brakes--they only had front wheel disc
brakes when I worked on cars).
Quoted message said:I will try keeping my foot off the break and activating the parking
break to see if there is any differance. This violates one of my
assumptions (which steve pointed out as inccorect) that you should not
have the weight of the car "resting on the transmission" What do you
think about this?
If you ever saw the small size of the "arm" that holds an automatic
transmission in park, you would never, never, rely on putting a car in park
alone to hold on a decent hill. Always be pointed forwards, wheels turned
into the curb, and USE THE FREAKIN' PARKING brake (that's what it is there
for). The parking pawl in an autotranmission (at least GM 350 and 400 trans
from the 70's) is about half the size of your pinky, and it goes into a mesh
about the size of your pinky nail. Yes, it is metal, but I would always use
a parking brake on any hill. A parking pawl could give up the ghost at
anytime. Why chance it?
Quoted message said:If in an automatic the car is supposed to be just left in park, and the
parking break is not important, perhaps I should have had them replace
it in the first place. I always assumed always using your parking break
in the manor I stated in my OP would put less strain on the
transmission.
Quoted message said:
In any case the grade's I am talking about are very reasonable, any
street water would barley run down.--Falooley
You should use the brake, I only suggested trying it with your foot off, as
that sets the brakes a bit tighter. What you could do is set the brake,
release your foot, then re-set the brake to see if that helps.
Sorry, I just don't get to reading this group as often as I used to.
--
Dr. Dickie
Skepticult member in good standing #394-00596-438
Poking kooks with a pointy stick.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!'😉, but rather 'hmm....that's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov