Parking Brake - Almost Non-Existant & dealer issues
 

Help, our parking brake doesn't hold - it's pathetic and the dealer seems completely unable to fix it. What should I be telling the dealer next?

In June 2011 we paid £384 to have the rear pads, discs & parking brake shoes replaced. Parts included discs, pad kit, shoe kit & retaining springs.

The vibration problem was resolved but the parking brake was still pretty limp.

8,000 miles & 9mths later......our car's been in for its annual service & MOT this week. Three days after the dealer received it (at 8am on day 1) it was delivered back to our drive & the keys popped through the door.

The parking brake remains so bad that the driver left it in gear when he left it on our drive! When I took it out of gear it rolled backwards - our drive has only the slightest of slope - almost imperceptable.

It's completely useless on even a modest slope. It has developed a grinding / whining noise from the N/S rear wheel when I go around roundabouts in third gear. That wasn't there when we handed it into the dealer on Monday.

The invoice for the MOT & service is £523. The invoice states that the dealer put the car onto lift, removed rear wheels, striped down both sides to shoes, found N/S requires clips and back plate requires welding, clean up shoes & discs, rebuild and adjust park brake - now OK (no, it's not!). This element costing £124 + VAT which the dealer says they discounted by 50%.

But it's worse than when it was left with the dealer! How they gave it a clean MOT I really don't understand.

Does anyone have any ideas? Any tips for the dealer based on your experience of parking brake problems?

To be fair to the dealer, they are usually pretty good but this performance seems to me to be truly awful - or am I being unreasonable?

Help!

Arianne

PS. I forgot - they didn't stamp the service book which we left on the passenger seat either.

The parking brake is a real pain in the backside, but it's not that difficult to fix. A dealer really should do a better job.

There are several threads on it in this forum, including this one. I did mine myself in an afternoon and it was actually really good by the time I'd finished.

Thanks for this. I've followed the link and printed it off for the dealer! They will find the car re-deposited on their forecourt tomorrow morning so they can keep trying, aagh!

If anyone else has any ideas or comments then please feel free to leave a post.....

Arianne

PS, ours in a manual D5 and not an auto

There must be something wrong with them if thay cant get the parking brake right. How many clicks do you have when you push the pedal down?

Problems with the XC90 parking brake are well documented, but as asahartz has said it should not be a problem for someone who is even reasonably mechanically minded.
What I find more worrying is that it is a dealer who has failed to fix it, I assume it is the main dealer who is just a mile or two up the road from you and the one who has just sold me an XC90! I have always trusted them, I wonder now if I should.

Yes, it is the main dealer just 2 miles away from us. And, to be fair, they have been pretty good for the 6yrs we've dealt with them. Never cheap but you get what you pay for....until now?

Clicks.....from memory earlier this evening I would say about 5-6 clicks, but there's no affect whatsoever until the last one. And that last click has only the slightest tension, although it's very marginal. And to get to that stage needs plenty of left-foot pressure just to get there.

We've decided that we'll be depositing the car back on the forecourt tomorrow and we'll give them another chance.

We'll keep 'the community' posted.

This isn't rocket science is it? I could understand it if it was one of those 'difficult to trace' electrical issues but this is a mechanical brake issue - pedal, cable, springs and shoes.

We'll see.

Good night folks.

Arianne

I get a couple of feint clicks and a fair bit of back pressure, the brake holds firm on very steep slopes.

Hi Arianne

I had my parking brake shoes replaced in November at my Volvo specialist and it came back working superbly. It has always been two clicks for my car so your 5-6 dosn't sound right at all.

The specialist did say the early XC90 hadbrake can give them a lot of trouble, but I thought you had a much later one than my 03? I think it was about £120 for fitting new shoes and adjusting.

All the best.

Roy

Ditch clelands and mate and head to Edinburgh for a proper dealer?!

Try running along the road with the park brake applied for 100m.... and that will help.

If the number of clicks is excessive, you need the cable adjusted...

Never seen you on the road yet...and I am only up in Penicuik!

David