Haven’t seen much about how to do this, so posting a bit of info. I use my parking brake regularly. One day I pulled it and the steel block at the parking brake lever end of the cable separated from the cable. I ordered a new one off of Rock Auto and finally got around to swapping it out. RAYBESTOS BC97335 Element3. The part itself was only $13.
Firstly, let me say I did not really know the best way to do this when I started. What I am writing is what I found to be the best way. Firstly, you must remove the lower cushion of the rear seat in order to access the rear of the front cable where it connects to the two rear individual wheel cables.
There are two bolts that need to be removed in order to remove the lower rear bench seat cushion. After they are out it is just a lift and pull forward to disengage two hooks that hold the seat base to the chassis.
After the rear seat is out, you will obviously also need to remove the center console. This is something I have done so many times with this Jeep, I forget the amount of times, and each time I hope it will be the last. You need to remove the chrome shifter bezel ring, black plastic that goes around shift control module, and then remove the rubber cup holder . Under the rubber cup holder should be a 10 mm bolt that holds the middle, and rear of the plastic console to the body. At the rear of the console when you pry the plastic cover off form the bottom, and remove the foam, you will see two small torx head screw that hold the rear of the console down.
Seat removal.
The front driver’s seat was removed as well. I am not sure if this is necessary or Mopar maintenance spec, but the carpet has a stiff protective under layer. This makes it very difficult to bend or roll the carpet up. Since I have had the front seat out before, I just disconnected the single electrical connector under the seat, pulled the four bolts and put the seat on the ground beside the Jeep. The lower portion of the seatbelt strap remains attached to the seat, so if you want to put the seat further away you would need to deal with that. When that is done, this is what you should see.
Cable housing End
The blue grommet circled in red is one of the cable housing ends. Since one end of my cable came off, I just pulled the cable out of the housing from the back end. You can also see in the photo above I needed to remove the floor moulding, rubber moulding partly, and the B pillar plastic moulding to let the sear belt go outside with the seat.
Cable swap
The red line shows the path the cable takes under the carpet. Both ends click into a hole with pushable plastic locks. Since the cable sheath is very stiff it was difficult remove the cable ends from the metal housing, so I just crushed or ripped off with vise-grips. At the bottom middle you can see the two individual rear wheel brake cables attaching to a bracket where the front cable slots in.
Sheath Removal
There is a 10 mm nut holding the cable sheath down to a mounting stud on the floor. The red arrow shows the normal path of the cable. The blue end circled in red shows the part that normally clicks into the metal housing.
Swapping cable housing
After removing the old cable housing, route the new one in under the carpet. This is a good time to vacuum. I found 6 dollars, a bunch of french fries, a long lost phone mount magnet, and a few other treasures. I clicked the back end into place, and then routed the front to more or less where it was going to need to go to attach to brake lever. Maybe it would have been better to attach it at the front first, and then rotate the spring loaded ratchet, and lock it with a grenade pin, or maybe the way I did it was correct. One thing I will say is be careful because the spring mechanism has a fair amount of force
Conclusion
All in all it is a fairly simple job, the hardest part being knowing what to take out, and taking all the trim pieces out carefully without breaking flimsy plastic tabs, and the difficult, but important part of connecting the front of the brake cable to the lever attachment point. Put it all back together in reverse, and that is about it.
N.B. Some of the seat bolts go through the floor, so you can see daylight when they are removed. I coated all of these with anti seize. Putting the center console back in place requires you to pay attention to about 5 different points of contact at the same time. Including the center console forced air pipe, front console mounting alignment pins, console front alignment tabs, seatbelts, brake lever, gear shift, etc.
18 mm Seat back Bolts seem to bolt into a threaded nutsert that is likely in an enclosed channel. I took the opportunity to pull these out, wire wheel the excess rust off of them, and put them back in with a liberal dose of anti-seize. They were very difficult to remove, and if they were any thinner bot material, or less hard a grade they likely would have snapped off. I don’t know if I will ever have reason to remove them seat backs, but at least I know I will probably be able to.
