How do you release a stuck parking brake?

Answer 1

My Saturn had this problem for a while.

What was causing it for mine was that the parking brake cables were old and rusty, and when the brake was disengaged, the spring (near the wheel) was not strong enough to pull the last bit of slack (up front) out of the rusty cable.

What I did for a long time was a) not use it and b) when it did get engaged, jack that wheel up and manually pull the slack through the cable, until the wheel rotated freely. (Exactly how to pull this slack out will vary depending on your car.)

Again, assuming that its caused by rusty cables (and not some other stuck part, which is possible) the real solution is just to replace them.

In my 2002 Impala, releasing the stuck parking brake simply involved manually releasing a gear that sits just to the left of the break. Mind you, my car has a floor brake rather than a hand one, but if you're having similar problems, just grab your tire iron (if there's a wedge on the opposite end) or a sturdy screw driver, get down on the floor and look at the mechanism hooked up to the brake. you should see a gear with a bunch of teeth directly to the left and behind the brake petal, above this there should be another metal part that's locked into the gear. simply put a little upwards pressure on this with your tool and it should release. Be careful though! if you're parking brake is all the way to the floor, like mine was, it's going to pop back with a lot of force! Make sure all your fingers are out of the way otherwise you'll probably end up hurting yourself, like

Note that this will probably only help in situations where your parking brake's release mechanism isn't working properly. If you have a rusty brake cable, i doubt this will fix the problem.