I feel your pain... As far as I know there are no fluids involved with a hand brake, it's just a cable and uses tension to keep the brake engaged... I had mine lock on solid a few weeks back when we had our first frost, and had to wait till halfway through the day before it would let go. When I brought it into one of the local Ford dealers, they checked it out and informed me that the problem was that the Ford dealer I purchased the vehicle at who had done two gas tank replacements for me had pinched off the handbrake cable when installing the last tank. Unfortuantely in order to fix the problem under warrenty I had to bring the car back to the first dealer, otherwise I would have to pay the full repair cost (still had to pay 40 bucks for them to diagnose the problem unfortuantely). Supposedly my old dealer re-routed the cable, but today we had another frost, and suprise suprise, it's locked on again. What sucks about my situation is that my driveway is a steep hill, and if I don't engage the handbrake and the car slips out of gear, it's going to end up in the back of a house on a neighbouring street :S (tested this out by letting the car roll out of my driveway, and it went clear across the road, into my neighbour's empty second driveway, and easily would have gone down over a hill behind his driveway and into a house...) So my car is currently out in the driveway with blocks behind the rear tires so I can sleep tonight
I say take the car in and have them look at it, probably nothing wrong, just bad luck (handbrakes freeze at times, usually when it's been damp during the day and the temp drops overnight), but could be something like a pinched cable (I don't particularily trust the dealer I bought my car at after the experiences I've had with them, so I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't fix their mistake...) With a pinched cable, if the handbrake freezes on any, there might not be enough pressure being released to break the lock that has been made. Later
Cathane
