...you become the mechanic

[montegut]

About three weeks ago I experienced a very soft brake pedal in my '87 GT when about 50 miles from home. Checked the master cylinder/brake fluid reservoir and it was VERY low. I had a leak somewhere. Topped off the fluid and made it home safely. Rear driver's side caliper leaking. Ordered right and left calipers because I knew they had not been changed in at least 15 years.  I can do that. How hard can it be? Factory service manual a great help! To remove parking brake cable from the caliper "remove cables at calipers." I just spent three hours over the past two days trying to remove the emergency brake cable from the caliper. I read all I could find in PFF and our newsletter. Watched YouTube videos. To compress the tangs on the cable I tried pliers, long needle nose pliers, a cable clamp, a keyed cable clamp, 13mm deep socket, 13mm open and closed end wrenches without success. Cursed all the GM engineers and authors of the service manual. Then I tried the smallest of three long reach hose grip pliers I used when replacing fuel lines. Worked great. Maybe took 10 minutes.

Don't know if anyone else has had trouble with removing the E-bake cable or if it was just me and my amateur mechanics skills. I hope my solution may help someone else.

[Raydar]

Did you loosen the tension from the equalizer / center link? That helps tremendously.

[Fierofool]

I just use a deep well socket or a pair of needle nose pliers with a 45 degree tip while pulling on the cable.  Sometimes you must rotate the socket to release  all the tangs.  Some report success by putting a small band clamp on the retainer tangs.

[montegut]

Did that. Tried that. I just think that cable had been on there so long it just didn't want to come off. I'll bet that cable had been on there over 20 years. Hope to have time next weekend to finish the job. Probably should replace the e-brake cables while I am at it.

[scottb]

Im confused. To get the cable off of the caliper you have to compress and remove the spring, then pull the cable out of the slot. Why do you need a deep well socket and various pliers?

[montegut]

You are correct. You can disconnect the cable from the pivoting arm on the caliper easily by hand. You must remove the cable from the e-brake bracket to remove the caliper or replace the e-brake cable. To do this you must compress the “tangs” on the clip holding the cable in the bracket and then pull the cable out of the bracket. That is what I had so much trouble doing. People reported several ways to compress the clip using needle nosed pliers, tightening screw type hose clamps around the clip, hammering a 13 mm deep socket over the clip. I just couldn’t do it with any of those methods. The “hose pliers” was the only thing that worked for me.

[Raydar]

I misunderstood the question. I thought the problem was removing the cable end from the lever.

Yeah.. There are like four "tabs" that need to be compressed, in order to get the cable sheath/bushing to release from the caliper bracket. I think I usually used a small screwdriver to depress them, working my way all the way around, while I pulled the cable sheath. Once you get all of them depressed, the cable will come out.
It probably helps that my cables are all ancient, and once I depress the tabs, they don't spring back.

[scottb]

Ahhhhh now I understand. I believe I used the hose clamp trick when I had to replace the cables