My 03 X type has a non functioning parking brake. My mechanic took the wheels off and inspected the system and said the calipers were rusting out and he would have to replace both rears as the parking brake is built into the calipers. He also said I need a new cable for the system. I did some checking on a few sites. I ran into this situation. There are two different calipers one the piston operates counterclockwise and the others it just describes the the caliper, also there is no cable available. I assume the cable is dealer only stock. When he had the wheel off the calipers were rusty but look serviceable to me, but I am far from a expert. What should I do??

 

Adam, how mechanically inclined are you? Having had issues with my rear calipers, I did a lot of playing with mine. The issue that you are having is the shaft that goes through the caliper body for the e-brake lever will rust and cause it to bind up. You can fix this, but it requires you to dismantle the caliper and rebuild it (takes about an hour once you have done it once). The rebuild kits are available on E-bay (made by Centric). You don't need any special tools other than a 14mm pentasocket (a 5 pointed socket). Once you get the lever out of the caliper body, you can use a greenie (scratch) pad and clean up the surface. You can then apply a little bit of high temp grease to prevent the corrosion from returning.

If you want a step by step on this, check out: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...fix-1-a-73065/.

As for the cable, do some more looking. I am sure you can find a cable somewhere else other than the dealer. Granted, JPLV has some pretty good prices and a place like say Copart or Jagbits should carry it too.

 

Thanks for the advice and the link. My mechanic was not in his shop yesterday but the other mechanic told me that "he had all the parts." He is going to work on it this week. So I post what parts he found and what he did.

 

Adam, ask them for the old calipers. That way you can play if you want and rebuild the calipers as needed and time permits so when you need another caliper, you can grab the one you need and install it. that is what I started doing.