Riding the emergency brake
 

So a week ago I rode the emergency brake for 8-10 miles during a lunch break at work. I was wondering why it was squeaking when I was parking and it was a little slow on acceleration. Stupid me! I didn't pay any attention to the light on the dash.

I have front disc, rear drum.

So two questions:

1) Which brakes does the parking/emergency brake engage? Is it just the rear drums?
2) How much damage have I done? I guess after a while of driving the rear drums heated up and faded. I tested the emergency brake recently and it seemed to more or less "hold" the car. Of course, since day 1, I could fully engage the parking brake and still be able to accelerate forward. (Did it accidentally for one or two seconds a few times)

The E-brake only locks the REAR brakes.....

its hard to say if you did any damage at all....did you have the e-brake pulled all the way up? or was it only partially on? and considering you could drive with it tells me it needed adjusting anyway and wasn't as tight as it should be. you SHOULDN'T be able to move the car forward if its properly adjusted and fully engaged....you WILL however be able to back up but you shouldn't be able to go forward.

you COULD just pop off one of the rear wheels and then take off the drum and look at the shoes.....I would think they got pretty hot....if you were constantly moving for that time....do you feel anything different now when you break? if not....at least you didn't warp the drums....and if you didn't....the worst thing that you could have done was cause some premature wear on the brake shoes.

Does the normal brake pedal engage both front and rear brakes? The braking afterwards seemed rather normal, drove for about a week and noticed no difference. Today, though, I noticed that as I was changing lanes at about 50mph and braking a little harder than usual, the wheel tended to jerk left and right (not too much). I don't think that's related.. maybe it's normal.. if the front disc brakes are engaged hard, it makes sense that the steering of the front wheels could be affected some.

The brake was pulled all the way up. This is how the car came from the factory--I hope that they tightened everything right.

I don't know when I'm gonna get the chance to look at the wheels. I hope that the drums didn't get warped... how can I tell, if I pop off one of the rear wheels?

How many "miles" do you think I wore off with 8-10 miles of riding the emergency breaks?

And finally, I'm sorry for the barrage of retarded questions, but just curious, why can I back up with emergency brakes, but not move the car forward?

Thanks for your patience :)

A warped drum (or front disc, btw) will make the brake pedal & steering wheel shake when you step on it. I'd have it checked.

Yes, the brake pedal works on all four wheels, in varying amounts depending on how much weight is in the car. Usually the front brakes take most of the load.

Bah... I wonder where I should take the car to get it checked out. If I take it to the dealer, I'm afraid that they'll tell me that this is out of warranty work or something like that (I bet they'll ask why the rear drums are warped). And I don't know any auto shops in my area that I can trust (I'm afraid they'll mess up the car while checking the drums).

How much would it run me to replace the drums?

And, how much damage am I doing by riding with warped rear drums? (of which I am not sure yet)

Or I was just thinking, how hard would it be to check the rear drums out myself? (Never did any mechanical work on any cars before...)

i just changed out my drums. Its a lot more work than the pads on calipers but to just take a look is easy.

1. put blocks under the front tires (so the car doesnt roll)
2. take off tire
3. the drum itself is the frisbee shaped peice with the 2 screws around the lug bolts
4. put on e-brake
5. to get the drum off you're gonna need an impact driver (sears sells em for $25) The high temps. of the braking and then the cooling look on these screws. Don't use a breaker bar to get these off b/c they round out very easily and then your in real trouble and have to drill them out.
6. turn off e-brake
7. pull off drum (it should come off easily. If it doesnt there is a little hole in the drum you can tap with a screw driver and hammer. Make sure the e-brake is off. If it still doesnt come off you need to adjust the e-brake cable and pull out some slack so you can get the drum off. You can go under the car and adjust the bolt on the e-brake cable or adjust the e-brake at the e-brake handle(there's a bolt there too).
8. check the inside edge of the drum (the part that contacts the shoes) and look for discolorations or blothing. Take a peice of sand paper and go over this edge a few times to pull that baked on pad off the drum.
9. check the shoes to see if they are unevenly warn

Now you can see all the bits and peices of the brakes.

10. when you put the drum back on and then the wheel back on before you lower the car spin the wheel and listen for scraping. That will tell you if the drum is out-of-round.

NOTE: DONOT pull the e-brake with the drum off!!! If you do the adjuster well ratchet all the way out and you will have to reset the adjuster which is a pain in the ass and you don't be able to fit the drum back on.

EDIT: This is really an easy job and literally only takes about 5-10 mins to take off the drum, inspect it, and put the car back together.

I drove the car today, paying attention to braking and the pedal. There is a little increased vibration of the wheel when braking, but my feeling that's because the road isn't perfectly flat.. I don't really feel any noticeable pumping in the brake pedal.. I can feel just a little bit, but it seemed like it was so from the start.

I think it should last another 1K, and then when I come in to get an oil change at 3K, I'll ask the dealer to check out the brakes. (Don't really have any good space or time to do the check myself)

this sounds like a good plan....go in for some normal maintenance and tell the service manager that you think there may be a problem with the brakes as you are getting some vibration in the steering wheel when you brake....this will get them to check the car...do NOT offer any other information...do NOT tell them you drove for a good while with the E-Brake on.....ask them to adjust your E-brake as well as you don't feel its very tight and be sure you tell them its been that way since you got the car.

to answer one of your quesitons from earlier....the reason you can back up easily with the E-brake locked up and not go forward is the fact that your E-brake only engages ONE of the two REAR brake shoes in a drum brake set-up....your brakes actally use the cars motion to help seat them....since only ONE of the two brake shoes is being engaged it is easily unseated, decreasing its holding ability when you try to run the car in reverse under power with the brake engaged....however when you try to go forward it helpes seat the shoe and thus the car shouldn't go forward.

not true in my '99. take off the drum and each assebly has a cable leading to it. The e-brake does however close at different pressures for each drum depending on the adjustment of the ebrake.

Mazda is still putting drums on pro's in '03???? I thought the '99 year was the last year to suffer drums.

Nope, even the new ones have rear drums if the car is 4-lug, IE DX or LX.

so if you're able to move/drive the car when the e-brake is up, something is wrong?!

in almost any auto car you can actually drag yourself along with the e-brake on. In a manual you just stall. It doesnt nesesarily mean anything is wrong. The e-brake may need to be adjusted if it is too soft. You should be able to pull the e-brake at anything over 15 mph and lock up the rear wheels. If you can't lock the wheels then you need to adjust the e-brake.

Yes I know they have a cable going to it....but I think you would find that it only activates ONE of the two shoes.....if your 99 actually activates both shoes in the brake...it would be the very first drub brake I have EVER seen in my whole life that did that....and its been a long life.. lol

I don't see what the major damage that would occur from driving with the e-brake for a while. The fact that you didn't realize it until later indicates that it wasn't even half way engaged.

I don't know about the ebrake letting the car go into reverse more easily that drive. I have auto(damn that auto crap) but when I put it in reverse, it doesn't move and requires the same amount of gas in either direction.

of course, every car is different, but honestly, I wouldn't worry much about the brake...get it checked out in the 3K oil change and see the state of it as SirNuke stated above
:D