[cje138]

I just bought a 2007 GXP (see my humble brag pic of my new toy below) and I noticed an issue. If I pull the parking break up as far as it will go I can still push the car on a flat surface and it rolls. It does nothing to hold the car still on a hill. Any thoughts?

 

[rob the elder]

There are threads covering this. Basically the forward most rear caliper is cable activated by the hand brake handle. Over time, the caliper can become dirty and stick. When this harms, the hand brake ceases to work.

The fix is to pull the rear wheels and clean the calipers, then using the tools of choice, free them up.

Basically all the braking is being done by the front brakes.

Try a google search on brake problems on the solstice forum and multiple threads will come up.

Here is one example
http://www.solsticeforum.com/forum/f12/parking-brake-not-working-64626/#post979542


Double points for using Soups answer!

 

[chickenwire]

What about "royalties" for Soup for supplying the original answer? (Just looking out for your intellectual property there, Tomato!)

Rob (as usual) gives sound advice but I believe he meant to say the "rear caliper" is cable operated. You can buy a tool to spin it back in to free it up, then you activate the hand brake a couple of times and it self adjusts forward. My '07 suffered the same symptoms - basically setting the parking brake gave your arm some mild exercise but other than that it did nothing.

Though it's true that most of your braking is done with the front, I definitely felt improved braking with the rears freed up. (Yes, if the rear calipers aren't grabbing when you set the parking brake, they aren't doing anything for you down the road either.)

Be sure to post back on how you made out.

 

[TomatoSoup]

Just to add to those fine posts above (I feel thu love!)...

After I wrote that post that Rob linked, I actually did this myself. My handbrake was working before - sort of, but after I did this it improved 1000% (rough estimate ) and as CW pointed out, my foot pedal firmed up tremendously too. Definitely an issue with those rear pistons.