e-brake cables on a '97 Ranger with 10 inch brakes

[97ranger22bronco]

I'm completely at my wit's end, I've been trying to get the e-brake reworked for months now but still a no-go. I got as far as in the pics, you can see it's very near but still short. The cables are free on the other end so there's no kinks in them that could cause them to not pull enough. These are the correct ones, or the closest that I've seen as far as length, the right one is from NAPA #94740 at 82.375 in length.

Long story short, when I ordered similar cables from O'reilly and others, they were even shorter and when i looked up the length, they were by about 4 inches, which is really weird, but that's been part of the saga that I've been struggling to get the truck up and running.

Any thoughts, suggestions would be really appreciated, since I can see the ends of both cables, i can see that they're all the way taught and there's no more play to give to move it forward.

 

[franklin2]

So would it all hook up and work correctly if you made the front cable longer?

 

[97ranger22bronco]

right, the front cable would need to be longer or one of the rear ones to give it more slack.

 

[2011Supercab]

I can't find it right now, but somewhere there is an article/video of how to replace the front cable.

In that article/video it shows you how to release the automatic slack adjuster in the parking brake pedal assembly, that should get a couple of more inches in the front cable.

 

[franklin2]

Have you guys ever studied how the parking brake works on these rangers? It is definitely a different concept when you are used to the larger trucks. Having one of the rear cables unmounted, just free to move, and mounting just the one other one is a weird setup to me. It seems to work ok, but looks a little backyard to me coming from a engineering standpoint.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I hate messing with trying to hook up the e-brake cables.

I’m not sure if it’s the same on a 97 as my 00, but I know on that, if you pull the cable under the truck with it released you can line up a couple holes and stick a nail in to hold it with extra slack. Sometimes it helps and sometimes not so much. I think parts quality is crap and the lengths are inconsistent and that’s the real problem