I'm having a little trouble finishing off some brake work. 1995, with rear drums. I pulled the parking brake spring/lever off the cable end because the parts after all these years were pretty rusty. I didn't think it would be too hard to get them back on. Problem is, the springs on these are pretty substantial (more than a lot of other springs in other cars I've seen in videos online), and I can't compress the things down enough to get the lever back on. A special Lisle brand tool made for this job wouldn't work for multiple reasons, and I tried using zip ties to compress it down only to find that the cable end is too big to fit back through the spring with the zip ties on there as well.

Any ideas? Thank you anyone that has a trick to do this.

 

Sorry for the not being much help but why wouldn't a regular spring compressor work for this?

 

Maybe something like that would work, but I'm not really familiar with them. The only ones I've seen used online, or are available to loan out locally seem to be meant for large suspension coil springs.

 

Have you tried disconnecting the other side sliding the the cable out.

 

I'll look at the shop manual on how that works or whether you need a certain tool for that. I'm wondering if the tension of the spring being on the drum end would make it hard to reattach the cable under the car.

 

While you're in the service manual, check out the installation of a new cable. It should explain the procedure for attaching the new cable. It is possible you may have to disconnect the opposite end of the cable to get the slack you need.

 

Might seem like a dumb or obvious question, but I have to ask. You don't have your parking brake lever pulled up, do you?

 

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I was able to get under the car, and push out enough slack to the drum to wrestle one sides spring/lever on. Then when I moved to the other side, it was now easier to pull out enough cable to get that side done.