Civic EG

I washed my car on Sunday, it was a fairly mild day. I drove home (not too far, 3 minutes maybe) and parked the car in the driveway. About 5 hours later I went to move it and it seemed like all of the brakes were seized. I had to rev it to about 3500 just to move it, and it would keep no momentum. There was also a very ranky smell afterward.

Today I tried to move it again, I thought maybe if the brakes WERE seized, they would have thawed by now. The left side feels like it wants to move, but the right side dips down a bit and it has a lot of difficulty moving again.

I drove it 100km home from the dealership and it was PERFECT, so that's why I initially suspected that was the case. Does anyone have any insight? And if I am right, how can I remedy it? The weather is still mild here right now, it rained this morning, which is why it puzzles me. The car isn't on level ground, which is why I'd hesitate to jack it and take off the wheel, but I'm sure I could grind it down to the street and do it there

there is an adjustment onthe brake pedal switch. it is threaded so that you can turn it out further. My car did this really bad, once I threaded the brake pedal switch to let the brake pedal sit a little further away from the floor it was fine. Not sure what cause it to happen so bad on your car though...
washing can cause the rotors to rust over slightly but not enough to cause this.

Oh nevermind all of the above lol, I just noticed that it was only your e-brake, not your actual brakes. The E-brake can be adjusted

do you have drums or disc?

Front discs and rear drums.

Teal, I'm not sure if it's the e-brake exclusively, I only thought that because I obviously didn't have the brake pedal depressed for 4 hours, but I did have the e-brake engaged lol.

I guess the first step I can do for sure is to remove one of the wheels and see if the pads are stuck somehow and see if I can't correct it myself like that...

BAXTER_EJ1 wrote:Front discs and rear drums.

Teal, I'm not sure if it's the e-brake exclusively, I only thought that because I obviously didn't have the brake pedal depressed for 4 hours, but I did have the e-brake engaged lol.

I guess the first step I can do for sure is to remove one of the wheels and see if the pads are stuck somehow and see if I can't correct it myself like that...

If have rear drums your problem might be that the wheel cylinder, (or at least that's how we call it here) seize in the "on" position or "apply" position and made your brake shoes stick to the brake drum and that's why your tires are locked. My grandpa had a mazda 323 and his tires got locked because of this and is really simple to repair if you want i could tell you how to do it. is either this or maybe the posibility that the parking brake lever is bent.
hope ypu can fix it, anyways once you remove your tires and check them post again and let us know. I'm pretty sure that anyone can help you here, that's why i like this site good people lots of help.

If I find that one or a few wheels are affected by this and one or some of the e-brake cables are seized I may just replace them. I don't think the dealership used the e-brake, it wasn't set when I got in to take it out for a test-drive. How hard is the process of replacing it all? I know I just take off the centre console and unscrew it from there, and all the lines run under the body and are totally accessible right? How are they connected to the drums and calipers? Might as well do it now before it craps out on me somewhere away from my house.

The cable is not hard to change, it takes a little patience to hook the cable to the parking brake lever. the spring that holds it can be a little to painful for confort if it gets you. I'll see if I can find anything with pics to help you out.

Changing the cable isnt difficult, more a pain in the ass than anything

You unhook it from the lever, thats the easy bit, then theres 3 or 4 bolts for each cable under the car that attach the cable to some brackets which hold it in place. These are a complete pain to get access to but it just takes a bit of patience

If you want ill take some photos of where the brackets are etc. Once its all undone you have to dismantle your drums a bit to unhook it, when i last did it i was taking off the whole trailing arms so that made it easy

If you have pics that's great, but don't go under your car to get some


Keep you updated .

Ive got to service my rear calipers anyway so ill snap some pics

Lifted it up, wheels wouldn't move. Took off the wheels, drum wouldn't come off.

Ended up cutting the parking brake cable and voila, the drum came right off, so clearly that's my problem. I have to replace the shoes which hopefully I'll get tomorrow. The parking brake looks a lot more complicated than I thought, there are different fittings and attachments running through various locations. I definitely need to replace both sides, does anyone know ANYTHING about replacing it? Haynes isn't very specific.

The other bitch problem is the fucking screws on the centre console, I don't know why but every civic I've ever tried to take those off, they strip. So now I have one screw drilled out, the other one has a drill bit broken in it so it's much harder to drill out. Even still, if I get it out, to get the threaded pieces out of the body is going to be a bitch and I'm really not sure what I'm gonna do.

Update:

Bought brake shoes (4 for $24), parking brake cables, rear right and rear left ($60 total) and some engine lubricant and a fuel system cleaner from PartSource today ($110 all said and done).

I took off the drug and fucked with the retaining clips for about 5 minutes and said fuck it. A friend of my buddy's works at a shop and said he'll replace the shoes AND parking brake cables for a case of beer on Monday night, so we're gonna commit a few hours to it then and hopefully get everything done. If possible I'll take pics of the parking brake cable replacement in case anyone else has to deal with it.

This car will be good as new as soon as the snow's gone