Parking Brake Not Working

[cofrari]

Drove the bus 5-hours home from Vermont on Monday. No problems until I got home. Went to put the parking brake on, and it won't engage. It's a 2004 IC CE200 with Hydraulic brakes and the black manual parking brake handle on the left. The brake handle doesn't feel any loser moving it up and down, so I'm assuming it isn't a broken cable. Any ideas what to look at? I didn't have any issues with the regular brakes on Monday. Would a parking brake not working have any impact on the actual hydraulic brakes? Would I be safe driving it to a garage if need be?


Thanks!

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

i dont know your bus?
does the top part of your brake handle spin?
if so thats the adjustment to snug up the cable?
if not then you should have a slack adjuster under the bus to tighten up the cable.
and if its a driveshaft drum brake then you might just need new pads and drum.
quick guesses without knowing exactly what you have

[cofrari]

The knob does turn, so that must be the one you are describing. I'll go test that out first and see if that takes care of it. Thanks for the tip!

[cofrari]

Turning the knob took care of the issue -- thank you! Another satisfied skoolie.net customer

[Trav5122002]

Anyone know where I can get a allison 643 Parking brake ?

[Crown_Guy]

Allisons' don't have parking brakes built into them. That's a function of the individual bus chassis design. Allison's only have Neutral and the gears. 1,2,3,4 for the MT643, and the higher the number selected that's the highest it will go. So you can hold it in a lower gear by selecting that number, for hills and like that, to keep the engine in it's best operating range, otherwise just leave it in the highest number and it'll shift automatically up to that gear. Park the MT643 in Neutral and set your vehicle parking brake. You can even put the thing in gear and still have the E brake set in most buses. You'll feel it engage, and it'll sit there in gear on the torque converter.