V70 Handbrake usage
 

Morning all,

My V70 (2013 D4) sits on the drive Monday to Friday and is only used
at the weekends.
my query is, should I leave it parked every week with the handbrake on or off?
when I took it out on Saturday morning I engaged the parking brake on an incline after driving about 5 miles and as the brake took the strain the nsr of car lifted higher than the right, suggesting an imbalanced braking force.
this has only happened once but I worry that leaving the parking brake on all week will have an adverse effect on its function but then again so might leaving it off all week.
Any suggestions, apart from going out every night and putting it on / off again to keep it exercised.

Terry

It is illegal to leave a car without the parking brake on It will do no harm , sometimes the pads may rust to the disk if the car is put away wet but it soon frees with a jerk … your weekend journey will keep the discs in good condition .. as with most cars , not using them makes them deteriorate more than when using them.

Every day's a school day.
Apart from the obvious risk, I didn't realise it was illegal to not use the handbrake. My drive is perfectly flat and if left in gear it would have no chance of moving, that's the only reason I gave it a thought.

I think if you leave it off the water will stay between pads and discs and make a corrosion patch , discs rust within 20 minutes these days .

You don't have to apply your handbrake if on your drive, the law only applies to roadside parking. (Highway code rule 239)

there isn't any point in leaving it off really .

I also tended not to bother with the EPB and just put the transmission into "P" but it was pointed out to me that if I didn't use the EPB for a period of time, the electrically powered screw drive could rust and jam the parking brakes so that they wouldn't work and that would be an MoT failure even if I never wanted to use them. So now I always apply the parking brakes and struggle with the stupid position of the brake switch!

That was my initial worry, prolonged periods of the brake being engaged causing issues with the release/application drive.

Clan is never wrong with the advice he gives, so I'll stop thinking about it and just carry on with looking for something else to obsess about.:thinking:

occasionally something goes wrong :-)

Did you realise that when you leave the car in P with the parking brake off , that the rear wheels are not locked to anything , they are free to rotate in opposite directions due to the action of the final drive differential unit . So if you park on a steep hill with one wheel on good road and the other on Ice or mud or wet leaves it can easily run away down the hill with the wheel on the most slippery side rotating backwards . Then you would be in serious trouble legally of course. No insurance ..

Parking on a steep hill is quite different, compared to a level driveway.

My father used to say that the parking brake should be applied each time you stop, then immediately be released again.
Unless in a slope, where it's really needed, of course.
His point, being a professional lorry driver, was that it needs exercise, but tends to get stuck if applied for longer periods of time.

The electric parking brake is very well sealed. Today, mine is seven years and has rolled 270000 km. Inside the parking brake, it still looks like new. But brakes applied in wet conditions will rust immediately, and that isn't good for neither pads nor discs.