SteveInCal

Hey Everybody,

I haven't had a chance to visit this forum for a while. It's good to be back and good to see there are lots of threads going... I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I'm pretty irritated right now and writing it all down may make me feel better (or get me more irritated).

My wife was an RX-330 and the parking brake quit working about a year and half ago. The pedal still goes up and down, and it locks and unlocks correctly, but it is REAL easy to push down and it goes all the way to the floor easily with no braking affect.

We took it to the local Lexus dealer for analysis and they said the spring inside the pedal assembly was broken. However, since the spring was not available as a separate part, they would have to change the whole pedal assembly, and the cost would be ~$750 Now you know why my wife has been without a parking brake for 1-1/2 years

My wife is getting ready for a road trip, so I finally got around to digging into this issue this week. I looked for a pedal assembly online and found both new and used units, but didn't buy one hoping I could find a replacement spring somewhere.

I figured out that Lexus does sell the pedal assembly spring separately for the ES-330, so I ordered one from the dealer yesterday for $8 and planned to pick it up this morning.

I went home last night to try and pull out the broken spring so I could compare it to the ES-330 spring and lo-and-behold the spring is not even broken! It's pretty tight quarters laying under the dash with a flashlight, but it is obvious that the spring is fine.

The big surprise, and the really irritating part, is that I "think" I figured out what the real problem was along - there are no adjusting nuts on the end of the parking brake cable So, every time you push the pedal down, the cable just slides back and forth in the groove. Now all of my deep seated fears about someone else working on my cars comes rushing back. Was the dealer trying to scam me, or was the mechanic just a moron? Either way, I'm not impressed... Wouldn't the adjustment nut be the first thing they checked? It's certainly the first thing you see when you crawl under the dash, so that leads me to believe that our local highfalutin Lexus dealer pays for the free loaner vehicles by charging $750 for an adjustment nut

So I ordered the adjustment nut (46441) and flange nut (94151-80600) from the stealer today and hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. Mind you, I'm still not positive this will fix the original issue, but I'm willing to bet it does.

After all of this babble, I have a few questions:


How do I remove the bottom panel under the steering wheel to gain better access? If it pops off easily, it will be worth the effort.

How do I remove the plastic kick panel along the exterior wall below the parking brake pedal? I'd like to see if the old nut fell behind that panel when it fell off

Is this going to be any more difficult than just threading the new nuts onto the end of the cable and tightening them? Any tricks I should know about in advance?

The end of the cable protrudes through a piece of steel that looks to be a strange mating surface for an adjustment nut. Is there anything else I need to install before I thread on the nuts? Maybe a washer? I don't see one in the attached assembly diagram near the missing part numbers 46441 and 94151-80600. Maybe the flange nut should go on first?


I also found the attached photo of a similar parking brake cable assembly that shows the two nuts on the cable. I'm not sure this photo is from an RX, but everything else looks pretty similar. Can anyone confirm that their nut assembly looks like the attached photo? If this is true, I think the part number descriptions are backwards on the parts diagram. It seems to me the flange nut (94151-80600) would go on first, and what they call the adjusting nut (46441) is actually a lock nut.


Thanks for your help and wish me luck, I'll need it. If this fixes the problem, I'm going to have a long talk with the local dealer

Thanks,

Steve

BTW, I don't feel much better...

salimshah

Spring is essentially to take the slack off and help maintain a start point (when spring is very lightly loaded). The spring would hardly play a role in applying the parking brake [mostly used in relieving action]

Start with some thing simple... Have some one operate the brake while you crawl underneath and observe. The picture you attached, shows the cable goes to a point in the middle where the cable splits up to go to each of the rear wheels.

You should see the same amount of travel (same from the top). Then notice if the same travel is happening at each of the rear wheel. The real adjustment is in the each of the wheels and then over-all slack is in the cable end.

I really dont understand the diagnosis done by Lexus.

Salim