Emergency Brake

Hey everyone, new here and new to the XJ world.

Just bought an 86 4x4 I4 and am slowly but surely finding more and more things wrong with it.

When I engage my parking brake, there is no response at all. I hopped underneath tonight and noticed that the rod that connects to the lever was actually broke and somehow jerry rigged back together. I was wondering if anyone here has any sort of diagram of the parking brake system, if anyone might know what this parts name is(the rod) and if anyone knows where I can get one other than from Jeep and from a junkyard(havent tried there yet). This whole situation brought up another question, why did it break? The jeep is budget boosted what I assume is 2 inches, is it possible the lift had something to do with the failure? Do I need to be looking at getting longer cables to prevent this from happening in the future(I remember reading that YJ cables were adequete replacements?) Thanks for any response.

Longer cables wont be necessary with a BB. Have no clue how the adjustment rod broke. Doubt you're gonna find that rod anywhere other than the dealer or a yard. Hope this helps. Welcome to .

If you're referring to the threaded rod that pulls on the equalizer, it probably was sheared off when somebody tried to adjust it.

I don't have a good diagram to post here, but here's what you should have there:

From the brake handle there should be a tensioner rod with a U-shaped loop in it. Behind that is the adjustable rod which consists of two pieces: the rod itself, and a bracket that the U passes through. That bracket is a piece of steel folded over the forward end of the rod, so that it retains the U without falling apart. At the hind end of the threaded rod is the equalizer, basically a piece of U-cross section channel with a hole in the center for the rod, and two keyhole slots into which the brake cable ends are attached. The equalizer pivots a little to allow for variation between the two rear cables. A nut on the threaded rod pulls the equalizer forward to adjust the whole thing. Actually there's supposed to be a pair of nuts, one to adjust and one to lock. They tend to seize up and can be a real bear to adjust, and my first guess is that an attempt to adjust ended up breaking the rod. It's also possible, though, that the boost simply ended up making the rod too short to connect with the stock cables. In that case, you might hafe a choice of either lengthening the rod or getting new cables. It's been a while since I looked at mine, but as I recall there should be a good 3 inches or more of thread on that rod. If there isn't it's probably broken.

If it is the threaded rod that has broken, you might be able to fabricate something out of other threaded rod, if you can figure out a way to hook it to the U-shaped tensioner rod without having it fall off. This may depend on how much of the original mechanism is left. If the forward end of the rod is still there with its connection to the U-shaped rod, you are ahead. If not, you may have problems putting together something that is strong enough and that doesn't just fall apart when the brake is released. If the equalizer is missing, you should probably try to find another correct one, because I think it's a pretty hard part to duplicate.

Look at pages 4-300 and 4-400 on this link http://161.58.56.228/parts_man/81j.pdf

Thanks for the response. I'm going to call Jeep tomorrow.