I have a strange problem. I cleaned my R56 a couple days ago and pulled up the parking brake to clean underneath it. I left the brake lever up when I was done. My wife got in the car later and lowered the parking brake. When she pressed the button in to lower the lever, the button wen't inside the black casing and didn't come back out. That's the way she described it, but I actually thing the black casing may have came out and covered the silver button.

I can still open and close the lever, but I must poke my finger into the black casing and push the button. It's in there pretty far (maybe three inches back).

I tried sliding the casing back, but it doesn't budge. Anyone had this problem before? Any idea what happened here?

 

Try taking the handle off to inspect it further. http://www.robincasady.com/ShiftKnob...ons/Index.html

 

Thanks for the link. I'll try it and see what I can find.

 

Slide the handle off a bit and inspect, the handle also might not be all the way back.

 

Mine did that to, and perhaps for the same reasons.

For whatever reason I had really pulled the lever up; way past what was needed to lock the brakes.

Then when the wife tried to drive the car she had to use 2 hands to release the brake. She drove the car and reported the same issue when she went to use the parking brake. I suspect her 2 hand method slid the grip towards the end of the lever.

I simply pushed the grip back to it's original position and made a mental note to not do that again.

No problems since.

 

Good to know I'm not the only one. .

I'll have some time to check it later when I'm done working.

 

There are a lot of plastic parts inside , plastic collar, plastic push rod that has an offset in it with the spring. Something might have broke or slipped.
I bought a complete ebrake on feeBay for 45 bucks.
I chopped it up for some custom work so I saw how it worked. I still have some of the inside parts if you need them .