Friday, January 11, 2013

Billet Parking Brake Handle

I took out the Mustang for an afternoon/evening drive last Thursday to keep the oil flowing through the motor nicely. When I backed out of the garage and set the parking brake, the handle snapped in half like a toothpick.

Broken '66 Mustang Parking Brake Handle

I was pretty sad that the part was made so cheaply. This was a brand new parking brake handle and although I don't remember the brand, it shouldn't have broken after less than a year of using it less than once a month. At any rate I knew I was going to need to buy a new handle to replace this one and I didn't want to have to go through the same thing a few months down the road so I started looking up metal handles. There were a couple on the market, but the one I fancied the most was the one that looked most like the original black handle which was sold by Mustang Plus. The other one they sold looked more modern and I just didn't like it. This is the one I bought:

Billet Parking Brake Handle

One of the things I like about this handle is that instead of it having a pin that is just knocked through the handle and into the rod (which makes it very difficult to take off later.) This particular handle has a threaded stud that is tightened using a small Allen wrench The threads are in the handle itself and the pin goes into the rod just like it would have with the original handle.

Installing a metal handle will prevent me from ever needing to change it again. On the off chance I want to change the handle in the future, all I need to do is get an Allen wrench, back off the pin and pull the handle off.