Hello all. Since I have a KK with parking brake issues I can chime in.
The KK's parking brake lever/drum is different than the one in the KJ. It doesn't have a ratcheting mechanism to keep tension, and nothing that can be reset. There was a recall done on the parking brake drum/lever more than 10 years ago and it only applied to the 08 KK's with manual transmissions, which I guess were more likely to roll away if a parking brake failed. The issue was the drum the cable winds around crushed over time, leaving the cable looser. I guess the company thought it wasn't a big deal unless you had a manual because automatic transmissions in park have the pawl in the transmission. I think this was a mistake-- it's the same exact part. My parking brake is pretty useless and has been for years. (I have an automatic.) I may need to buy a new drum/lever assembly to get mine working properly, but even if I replace it it will eventually wear out again.
Before I do that, I need to try and take up some cable slack using the star wheels on the rear brake drums (inside the "hat" of the rear rotors). I know the star wheels on my Jeep are messed up because the two cables leading to the parking brake shoes are at different lengths. I found this out when I had the center console off as part of a heater core replacement I did last year (the rear of the Jeep is up in the photo):
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The drivers side (right side of the photo) definitely has less slack than the passengers side.
Going back to the star wheels, the KK's access hole for the star wheels is located behind the brake calipers. This makes it impossible to adjust the tension with the brake calipers on, which means you can't spin a wheel to gauge the friction like you should. The KJ's don't have this problem because their access hole is at the bottom.
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The easiest way to adjust the star wheels is to remove the wheel and caliper, and even the rotor itself. Then turn the star wheel, put the rotor back on (if the brake shoe clearance you set allows it), and see if you got it tight enough. This method is terrible and doesn't work very well. The star wheel is the yellow arrow and the hole to access it is the red arrow. (This is the passengers side and so the front of the Jeep is to the right.)
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I think I will use this method to get it close, then put the rotor back on and attempt to tighten the star wheel from the back side. I will do all this with the center console off to try and even up the two parking brake cables, so that when I pull the lever both sides get equal force. Without the console removed, I won't be able to see if I get the cables even.
If after doing all of the above the tension isn't sufficient to hold the Jeep on a hill, I guess it's time for a new drum/lever assembly.
Now, one important caveat before taking the center console off: be sure your battery is disconnected. If you accidentally knock something into that rectangular black plastic airbag module and give it a good bump, you could set off all your airbags. This happened to a member on here from Costa Rica, and he had to have all new air bags shipped down there to replace the blown ones. This is an expensive mistake, but we can all learn from it. BE SURE that the airbags are powered down before removing your center console and messing with the parking brake assembly.
There are a couple other parking brake hacks out there from LostJeeps. These threads are worth a read and Diggerfreek even went so far as to bend a tab on his parking brake drum/lever assembly to get more tension. I am not sure I want to do that, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Parking Brake adjustment - Diggerfreek -
http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=51247
Parking Brake lever adjustment mod - Diggerfreek & Scar0 -
http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=66764
For now, fixing my parking brake is on my to-do list, but not at the top. Somehow the Jeep passed inspection this year without fixing that, so I have another year to figure it out. However, it does make me a little nervous knowing that I don't have the parking brake to fall back on in the unlikely event of brake failure... Maybe this needs to move up on my to do list!
