any tricks to changing e brake cable & pully 66 sl

[merrill]

I'm going to bit the bullet and change the e-brake cables including the pulley & housing.
Is this fairly straight forward or do i need to do something crazy like pull the axle?

thanks in advance
matt

[ja17]

Hello Matt,
No special tools required. But it is a bit tedious. You will probably have to remove the rear brake shoes to remove the pulley housing, which is aluminum and corrodes badly. The aluminum pulley inside can also sieze from corrosion. replacement pulleys are plastic to prevent the corrosion problem. Sometimes when loosening the 10mm nuts which hold the housing, the stud may break off if corroded. Don't expect to breeze through the job in a couple of hoours. Later W113 cars (250SL and 280SL) had disc rear brakes and the emergency brakes were all together different.

Joe Alexander
Blacklick, Ohio

[J. Huber]

Hey Matt, nothing to add to Joe's reply except that I just had it done last month. Initially, about a year ago, I was having my rear shoes done and thought it a good time for the cables. They were inop and horribly shot. My mechanic discovered that the pulleys were also extremely rusted and seized. I decided to put off the cable part -- until last month.

All in all, fairly painless -- parts through SL Classics were $56 for each cable, and $68 for each pulley mechanism. My replacements were not plastic, however. Labor came to about 3 hours. It's nice to have the e-brake again (although I rarely use it...) Hope this helps.

James
63 230SL