I've had a 2004 XJ8 for about a month now. Car is nearly perfect, but the parking brake doesn't work. I have the amber light and the PARKBRAKE FAULT message in the dash. I've tried the battery unplug/reset brake trick to no avail, so it's actually bad.

Here's the deal, though: I live in South Florida, and the nearest hill is about, oh, seven hours away or so, so I couldn't really care less whether the parking brake works or not. The amber light and error message is an annoyance, though. Does anyone know if there's a cheap/easy way to just tell the car to shut up and not worry about it?

 

I think you can cancel it off by pressing the "Reset" button on the little button array to the left of the steering wheel, (right hand side in the UK where I live). This only cancels it off when it appears, it is not permanent. According to my Owner Manual, it is set whenever the driver rremoves the ignition key, if the little lever hasn't been used. YOu could try puling the lever up and down a few times to see what happens. Pull up brakes the car, push down releases the brake.

Anyway, I would get it checked out at next service. I had such warning last year, but it just disappeared and has never recurred. Mind you, the car has been serviced since that time.