Frozen Parking Brake

Anybody experienced this problem before on the MKVI? I see it was common with older VWs. I'm certain it's freezing after today. Read below for the story, if you're interested...

48 hours ago: left work and drove home. Once home temps quickly dropped into low 20s. Attempt to leave and find drivers side wheel is stuck after releasing the parking brake. Not just stuck.. wheel won't turn at all. Get the car out of driveway and start going forward/reverse and jamming brakes. Eventually it releases. Run the errand, return home, set parking brake.

Following morning: temps in the teens. Parking brake stuck again. This time, car up on jack, wife sit in car and maneuvers the lever while I manipulate the cable/spring by hand and it releases, after 20 minutes of messing with it. Hmmm. Left the brake off the rest of the day and overnight.

This morning: temps in single digits. took car to general mechanic (not VW guru, but close to home). Left it with him and got a ride to work. He calls me, can't find a reason why its sticking. Lubricates the hell out of it and parks it outside with parking brake on. I get there after work (temps in teens) jump in and the wheel is stuck again. Limp it into the warm garage after trying to break it free for 20 minutes outside. Leave it parked, suspecting that it's frozen and sure enough, three minutes later, its thawed and spins freely.

All the while... the car drives normally. Any thoughts?

I had this happen to me yesterday when the temps hit -22f. The brakes eventually released after a few hours. I limped the vehicle a few blocks to my local dealer and they checked and replaced the rear cables. They confirmed that the cables were sticking, even once up on the hoist and inside the garage. This may have been a pre-existing issue that the cold brought out, but the vehicle is pretty new with only 23k on her.

Have you tried parking and NOT setting the parking brake...making sure the car is either in park or 1st or reverse? I was told when it was extremely cold to not set the parking brake for that reason. Try it and see if the brakes still freeze up in the morning.

This happens to me every time the temp goes well below freezing, like today. I usually don't use the parking brake under cold conditions because of the parking brake getting frozen in place. I forgot today and it is like 6 degrees outside, so f it, I'm not going back to the car just to release the brake. I can expect when I get in the car, to have to overcome the brake pressure when pulling out of the parking space, and over come the brake pressure for the first mile or so until the parking brake warms up enough to release. I've done it this way since the car was new (2010) at about 10 times every winter. I didn't need to replace brakes until just last winter at 115K miles.

So now I'm sure some VW brake Guru will come on here and tell me how my car is going to explode later tonight when I go out to the frozen ass car that never heats up while just idling, and I just take off disregarding the parking brake frozen in position. I welcome the news, I often wondered what kind of damage I am doing to the vehicle when I accidentally set the parking brake in the cold weather.

The older VW's are famous for this and the cause is condensation in the brake cable. I fixed the issue on my B4's by filling the brake cables with G12 antifreeze and have not had an issue since then and it's been years. The G12 has corrosion inhibitors in it to prevent the cable from rusting and will mix with any water to continue preventing freezing. I use a vacuum pump and a backyard engineered connector to siphon the G12 into the cable housing and can do it with the cables on the car. I looked into using oil to fill the cables but in addition to being messy and not knowing if it's rubber compatible, it won't mix with the water present and will still cause a freeze-up.

The new wagon I picked up does not have the G12 in the cables yet so I avoid using the parking brake when it's very cold.

Just thought I'd toss that out there.

Dragoncoach said:

Have you tried parking and NOT setting the parking brake...making sure the car is either in park or 1st or reverse? I was told when it was extremely cold to not set the parking brake for that reason. Try it and see if the brakes still freeze up in the morning.

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Did not set brake overnight, no problems this morning. No doubt that it's freezing.

I live where it gets to -20 at least a few times in January. I've never had a problem with my parking brake releasing. But if I did, I sure wouldn't be able to "just drive away anyway", because the rear tires would be locked, and the front tires would be spinning dragging the car forward. I would simply not be able to drive it. If there's ice in the cables, pulling the parking brake handle up a little more might be able to break it. There should not be water in the cables at all, if there is, they are damaged/defective. I tore the covering off one of my cables with a pressure washer, injecting water into the cable, so I dried it out as best I could by just bending and opening the gap so the water dripped out, and then I covered it with liquid electric tape. No problems, below 0 out. If ice is forming in the brake mechanism itself, I don't know. I'd have to pull it apart and see what could be going on with that. Never heard of this happening though. Good luck to you guys finding solutions to this!

Mine does this exactly like everyone has described, in very cold temperatures. Not setting the brake is the temp fix, but I'm hesitant always doing this because I drive manual and as such was raised to use the e-brake incase the car pops out of gear.

My guess is the grease has totally broken down inside the cable, or they dry cables? I see metal bends coming out of the under-body but if I recall it looks like there's a segment that continues to the rear calipers. Can the brakes be disassembled so I can put fresh good grease and stop this issue once and for all?
The rubber boots are in working order as well.

Has anyone ever had the opposite happen? I went to rotate tires on the sportwagen and found that engaging the parking brake only engages the drivers side wheel. No grab at all on passenger side. Odd thing is, the cable looks good and moves freely while wife actuates the brake handle. Seems to have full range of motion, but no contact is made on the rotor. Regular brakes work fine.

Quite common. The cable needs adjusting, or better yet, check to see if and why the pads on one side are worn down a lot more than the other side. This causes an imbalance due to the pad thickness and creates the condition you describe.

Abacus said:

Quite common. The cable needs adjusting, or better yet, check to see if and why the pads on one side are worn down a lot more than the other side. This causes an imbalance due to the pad thickness and creates the condition you describe.

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I took off the caliper to check this out further. Both pads on the pass. side have plenty of life. I cleaned the metal tabs that sit in the caliper carrier, checked the integrity of the parking brake cable, and it's range of motion, and reassembled. With helper wife actuating the brake lever, I have no engagement of that caliper. When she yanks it, I can almost feel a faint knocking from within the caliper. I'm suspicious the caliper is nfg, or whatever the mechanism inside the caliper that engages the piston is nfg. I took it for a ride and everything else seems normal, only the driver's side rear brake isn't strong enough to hold the car on a slope. Should I follow up with the dealer since they re-warrantied this thing anyway?

I would follow up, it can't hurt.

A couple years ago I had my right rear caliper sticking on the Mk VI. It would fail to retract after a brake actuation and drag constantly. If I manually backed off the parking brake adjuster as if I was changing pads it would work fine until the first parking brake actuation, then start dragging again.

I replaced the caliper and haven’t had a problem since. I tried to disassemble the adjustment mechanism on the bench but it seized up after backing out a few turns and I damn near broke the tool. I assumed the problem was related to an overly enthusiastic use of parking brake, which I think I did do.

Overall I’ve found the Mk VI rear brakes to be less problematic in comparison to the two MK IV’s I’ve owned. No issues with stuck and corroded cables, while the normal life of a MK IV cable is 2-3 years. All brakes seem to do better with regular moderate use, after a few thousand km of mountain/highway driving over Christmas my corroded rear disk seems much better, but still going to get replaced this spring.

Thanks for sharing. I'll be giving the service dept. a ring about this. I've never had this problem with my mk4...only rotted cables and three or four calipers seized shut over the life of the car. This issue I just find odd... The wagon was at Danbury VW getting the emissions fix this winter, and they even sent it home with a x-point inspection report.

VW service says the pb cable is seized and needs replacing. Also as I suspected, the caliper needs replacing. Is there a how-to on disassembling the center console so I can r&r the pb cables? Looks like a pain. They quoted me $390 + tax to do the cables. I laughed.