Parking brake or first gear?

[palacebear]

Mrs. PB's 'modern' is a 2007 Astra with disc brakes all round. Far as I can tell, the handbrake is by means of scaled-down drum/shoes arrangement contained within the rear hubs. Our driveway slopes a little and the handbrake is useless. Adjust it nicely and it works for a couple of weeks then rapidly loses efficiency. We just park it in gear every time with the handbrake on reasonably firmly.

[jagnut66]

How does it pass an MOT??
Best wishes,
Mike.

[palacebear]

Service and brake adjustment immediately before test

[jagnut66]

[IaininTenbury]

I've had enough tired old cars, to get into the habit of putting it gear when parking as handbrakes have varied from quite good, to totally useless. Anyway it was how I was taught by the driving instructor, maybe that's changed now, but belt and braces approach still makes perfect sense.
Unless leaving for long storage, (ie over a week) then hand brake off as it can stick. I'm reminded of a Minor I bought once which had been stored, and the owner had read somewhere about wedging the clutch pedal down so the clutch plate wouldn't stick to the flywheel. A valid enough theory, but he'd got the wrong pedal and wedged the brake pedal hard down for 5 years... That was a really difficult car to move!

[Chipper]

Mrs. PB's 'modern' is a 2007 Astra with disc brakes all round. Far as I can tell, the handbrake is by means of scaled-down drum/shoes arrangement contained within the rear hubs. Our driveway slopes a little and the handbrake is useless. Adjust it nicely and it works for a couple of weeks then rapidly loses efficiency. We just park it in gear every time with the handbrake on reasonably firmly.

My daily driver 1997 BMW E39 5-series has a similar system. I recently fitted new rear pads and handbrake shoes and carefully adjusted the cables, but the handbrake is still very lame, not good at all for holding a 1.5-tonne car, and certainly one would expect better of a German engineered so-called 'Ultimate driving machine'. It is fortunately, a manual gearbox version, so I usually end up having to leave it in gear to supplement the handbrake, which struggles to hold the car even on a very slight driveway entrance slope, unless yanked on hard and 'brake checked' with use of the footbrake as well to halt the thing.

My Traveller's handbrake, on the other hand, works pretty well, and very easy to operate unlike some modern E-brake systems, which you can bet will be a real pain to get through an MOT some years down the line...

[viewsonic1]

While we are on the subject, does anyone own a Mercedes with a manual gearbox but with a foot operated parking brake? I considered a 180 C Class once with this set up and whilst I can understand the logic with an auto-box, I couldn't for the life of me think how to do a hill start; certainly not with our Bailey caravan in tow. It seems you need the agility and nimbleness of a ballet dancer.

[SteveClem]

We had one a few years back. It's not a very good system really. And I'm not convinced about the electronic handbrake thing either...one of the reasons we got rid of my wife's Golf. Oh,and it was completely characterless as well. As our allotted time gets shorter I can't be doing with boring!