How to Replace Parking Brake Cables 2000-07 Volvo V70

Hi. I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

Hey, everyone. Sue here from 1A Auto. Today on this '03 Volvo V70, I'm going to show you how to remove and replace the rear parking brake cables. If you need any parts for your car, click on the link below and head on over to 1aauto.com.

I'm going to pull up on the E-brake lever, all the way up. I'm going to put the key in, turn it on so I can select the gear of neutral, and then turn the key off. To stop the key-dinging noise and to shut the dome lights off, I just take a screwdriver and I'm going to latch this two notches in. Instantly, the key stops dinging and the lights will go out once I do the passenger door also. Okay.

With a body trim tool, I'm just going to pull up on this, this is called a pen holder, I'm just going to remove this piece. I'm going to set that aside. I'm going to lift up the center console armrest and take the rubber pad out, the mat on the bottom. There's two exposed mounting bolts and that's a T25. Take those right out. I'm going to go ahead and take the two front ones out behind that pen holder also. All four are T25 Torx bit.

Now with a flathead screwdriver, I'm going to take off the side trim piece on the driver's side, and then do the same on the passenger. You just put the flathead screwdriver in that plastic keyway and turn it, and it should be ready to pop forward. Then you take this and slide the whole console piece backwards. See the hooks? The hooks are facing forward, just slide it back. Repeat the same thing on the passenger side.

Now, I'm going to remove this gear shifter selector. There's two tabs right here. I'm going to pull on those and lift up on it. When you get to this point, to be able to take the console out, you've got to get this out of the way. There's four, see the little points right here? There's one there. There's four of them. In each corner. There we go. I'm going to take that trim piece out of there. Now there's enough room to lift this up. We have to take the shifter, E-brake lever plastic off. I'm just going to use a trim tool. You can slide that all the way up.

I'm now in the back seat accessing, so I have to disconnect the adaptor connector to pull the housing, the console up. There's a door here with a plastic trim piece. I'll just pull that one off. Let's see if we can physically get out hand up in here and disconnect the adaptor. You can see it right here. It's the gray adaptor right there. Let's see if we can slide it forward. Bring it down. Once you can expose the connector, pull it down enough to see it. You'll see the clip. Push in on that clip and separate the two pieces.

Now we can lift the console up. I'm going to put the shifter back actually into one of the gears so I have more room in the front. I'm taking the E-brake panel aside, so we have to, kind of, like guide that through. I'll lift the front up, and then I'm going to squeeze this panel out and through. There's the center console.

The first thing I'm going to do is take the adjuster off. It's like a clip, a safety clip, just push down on it and then I can back off on the nut. I'm not going to take it all the way out. I just want there to be slack so that we can access these E-brake cables. I'm going do both. Undo one side, and do the other. Now you can leave your hook. Let the front cable hooks hang down.

Now you want to push your passenger seat forward all the way, and your driver's seat forward so you can access the back, but we have to remove the backseat and carpet. I'm going to grab the little loop that they give you here of cloth, and you just pull the seat up. Now you've exposed the mounting down here. You've got the two red levers that hold the seat in to the bracket. I like to take two thumbs and I just push it forward. Now I can lift that seat right out. You have to lift both back seats up. Take those red tabs. Now with a body tool, I'm going to pull these little pieces up. They're just plugs for a different style seat. You've got one there and one on this side.

Now we have to remove the trim panel here on the doorjamb. You repeat the process on the other side. See the tabs. Now we should be able to pull and peel back the floor panel, the carpet.

Now that I'm ready to pull these cables through, I have access through the floor panel, before I pull them out, I'm going to add some wire so that I can trace myself easily back through these holes under the carpet in the floor. I'm just going to use some excess wire. Now, I'm just taking a pry bar to lift the carpet up and I've got an aluminum block here that I'm going to wedge underneath here. If you've got a piece of wood, that'll work, too. I just want to be able to hold the carpet up a little bit so that I can show you what I'm about to do. I've got that wedged up a little bit. I'm going to reach down and grab this cable. I'm going to make sure my wire doesn't get tangled up, and I'm going to pull that through. There we go. Now the wire is still there. Just reach up in there, grab that cable, and pull it through. Now with both cables exposed, before they go through the firewall of the floor here, I'm just going to take the wires off.

Now I've disconnected my wires from my cables and I can take a pry bar and I'm just going to push that rubber boot through. Make sure, because you don't want to find out you can't get it from down below. There we go. I did that on both sides. 19-mm socket and a breaker bar, and I'm going to break the lug nuts free.

Now the car is in the car and we can remove the lug studs. Remove the bleeder screw boot cover, and it's just a, sometimes I have to use a flat blade to pop it up there. Put that aside. The bleeder screw is an 11-mm. I want to make sure these break open. I just loosen it up and then I just slightly bottom it out because I'm going to have to release that with the caliper off.

Now we've got to remove the anti-rattle clip. To do that, I'm just going to take a pry bar, pry it over the edge like that, and then undo the hooks. It just gets a lot of the brake dust and road debris in there. They're pretty hearty. They won't break. You've just got to work it. There we go. I'm going to end up putting that in the vise and bending it back just at that angle right there. It's not a big deal.

Now we're just going to remove the covers on these sliders, caliper sliders. They're just little dust covers to protect them from the weather, make it easier so that they don't seize up. This an Allen head, and it's an Allen 7, number 7, metric 7. We're going to release the caliper slider pins. Then undo the ABS clips here where it attaches to the flex hose, just to give me a little bit more flex on the caliper because we're going to move that aside. I'm just going to pull those sliders right out. You've got a top one and a bottom one.

Now I'm just going to grab a little pry bar. I'm just going to pry the caliper off the bracket. The rear pad should come out with it just like this. As you can see, it's attached by the spring clips that pop in the piston. Snap those out. Now you can just let this hang. There's not much weight to it. If there was a lot of weight to it, I would choose to use my caliper bracket arm, but there's no weight to it. There's no stress on the flex hose. Slide the outer pad out. See how it slides on that bracket?

You have two mounting bolts for the caliper bracket to knuckle. There's one here and one there. It's a 13-mm socket. I'm just going to break that free. I'm going to break the top free before I pull that one all the way out. Something tells me someone who last did this break job put a lot of thread locker on here. Oh, look at that. Look how much they loaded that up. It doesn't need to be that much. Remove that bolt, and you can slide that bracket right out.

Now all I have to do is take off this mounting bolt on the hub. It's a 10-mm socket. I'm just going to try to break it quickly and hold onto the rotor at the same time. There's your rotor. I like to use just a pair of needle-nose pliers, you can use whatever works for you, that way I can grab onto that spring. Remove that spring. If you're not going to take the other side apart, or if you don't already have the side apart for a visual, then lay out the pieces the way it comes off so that way you don't confused with how it goes back together, or you could just watch this video.

Now these are tricky. These are something else. You'll see when I get it out, if you've never taken one of these apart. The design of it is completely weird. You think you've got it, and then it's different every time. Basically, it's a hook inside a slotted area, so you've got to push it down and twist it, but unfortunately, you don't know which way to go because you can't see anything. I think I got it. Okay, now you'll see the nightmare that I'm dealing with. You've got to lift this up. See this design? You can't see it from the front of the shoe, so you don't know which way the hook goes. Once it's in there, it goes like that or the other way. It doesn't really matter which way it goes. When you push in, and you've got to line it up perfectly, so you're twisting, you're trying to line it up in that flat spot perfectly.

Now, I'm going to take the bar for the rear part of the shoe. Set it aside. I could take this shoe out. Take that spring off. This spring does go on the inside, so it doesn't go on the outside when you put it together. It doesn't go like this, it goes through the inside. Now I can do the same. I've got to take that spring off the bottom, which is identical to the top one. I lucked out.

First thing I have to do is disconnect this E-brake expansion. It's the piece that when you pull on the cable it pushes the shoes out. It has this little ear that pops in there. I'll show you how it works after. That's what it looks like closed with this earpiece inside the new cable, or the E-brake cable, like that, so when you pull on the cable, this expands and pushes these two ears out and makes the shoes hit the inside of the hat or the rotor.

Now, we're going to pull the cable out. 12-mm socket. I'm going to disconnect the bolt where the cable is mounted to the crossmember in the rear here, and just break that bolt free. It comes with a spacer. It goes spacer, bolt, through that bracket. I'll set this down. Now, I'm going to pull the cable out through the little hold clips. There's two of them. We've already dislocated it up in the front here, so we can pull that out. There's this one plastic clip right here. It's got, like, butterfly clips, basically like this plastic. Pull down on the bottom part, undo it, then you can release the top. That's what it looks like. You're going to need to reuse that, so I can set that down. I'm going to take a pry bar and put it right there on that tab and pull this piece out.

That's the bad E-brake cable. You can see how it's been chafed. The casing opened up, water got in there, and the cable is really stiff and frozen. That was what was causing the E-brake to stick on.

We need to save this piece. It doesn't come with the new E-brake cable, or parking brake cable, so I just need to take it off of the old cable and I'm just going to put a pair of locking pliers right here. Lock that on, and I usually just take a little hammer or a pair of pliers and I just bang this back. See the piece slide through? I can release these pliers and pull it right out.

Now, I'm going to reattach the piece that we just took off the old cable onto the new cable. Line up that cable inside there with that anchor and just going to pull it through. At this point, it's pretty hard to pull that through, so another trick I use is I'll just go over to something solid, like a vise, and I'll rest this on there and I'll take a little punch and I'll punch that right down until it goes into the locks. There it is. See, it's in the locks. Fits right in those little windows.

It's time to put this piece back through the knuckle. You see the ear on this plastic tab? There's a cut-out slot on the aluminum knuckle and you're going to line that right up with there. You might be strong enough. I'm not really strong enough to push in and hear it click. I'm going to give it a shot again, because I always try, but I end up having to use like a brass punch and a hammer, just tapping it lightly til it clicks in there, but I'll give it a shot. Nope. It's pretty difficult. I'm going to line that up and then I'm going to mount this so that I don't have to hold onto the cable and do this at the same time. It's goes bolt, spacer, and then mounting hole. Just start it by hand.

Now I'm going to guide that up through the floor through the hole. There we go. I'm going to lock it into the clips. I'm going to put this boot on because I don't want to forget. That's the last thing you want to do is have this whole job together and hear water on the passenger floor in the back. Okay, I'm going to tighten up this bolt. 12-mm socket, and put this clip back on. I'm going to guide that back into that spot. It keeps falling out. Pick up the slack here. Now I can put this, the clip goes up in the top first, then it comes down around the cable and locks on. I'm just going to put a little lubrication on that because there's an O-ring in that plastic casing. That way it might go in a little smoother when I just hit it with a little, I'm going to line that tab up. Make sure it's lined up. Take a pry bar and I'm going to tap it in hopefully successfully. There it is. You can hear it click in. This won't come out.

Before I assemble the E-brake shoes, I'm going to clean it with a little Brakleen. Get some of that brake dust out of the area. These dots right here on this backing plate, there's a spot there and there. They're highlighted. They're high points. This is where the E-brake shoes, parking shoes, ride on the backing plate. It's a good practice to put caliper grease, or a silicone paste, something. It just helps the wear and it can also eliminate any squeaking noise if possible.

Now I'm going to put the, what I like to call, the dolphin with the long snorkel, a little bit of copper, never seize inside on this pivot point. See if I can get it down in there. It just helps it from freezing up and seizing up the E-brake parking shoe. Now the hook is what goes on to this piece, and it might fight you a little bit, but it's pretty obvious how it goes in. It's going in and snap this way, and it's very cumbersome the way it, you just have to manipulate it and don't give up. There we go. See it how it slid right in there? Don't come out, now. I'm going to push that back in. There we go.

I'm going to install the top shoe first, the top parking brake shoe. When you look at your shoes, you have the flat keyway here and a more narrow one. The narrow one actually goes on the E-brake pivot. This goes in the back with the bar. I'm going to rest that up there. Line that up. Line it up with that slot, then I'm going to put the spring in. It's going to go in there like that. I'm going to line it up with that slot and turn it. Okay, there it is.

Now I'm going to put the bottom shoe on. I'm going to put the spring in the shoe, in that location, and I'm going to put it in the slot that it calls for. Line up that guy. Now the spring goes behind this, so you make sure you get it to go behind. I'm going to use the leverage of the shoe to manipulate it down in, and into the slot. There is sits. I can hold it, it's not that hard, and I can slide in the spacer for the rear. You see how that goes right into the shoe, in those slots in that flat piece, and then it's in. At this time, I can put the bottom spring in and line it up with that inner cut-out, the slot. Got it. Last spring to put in is the back spring on the front part of the shoes facing the front of the car. It goes into that little keyway slot, and then on the top. There it goes. I'm just like to move them around and make sure they're all seated.

Before we install our rotor, I like to clean this hub up. I'm just going to take a wire brush to it. Just take any rust peaks off, because that will cause the rotor to, it can cause a pulsation, and it's just going not seat correctly so it'll go down the road and have a little pulse. Spray them, get all that rust off. Put a little copper high temp anti-seize on the points so it doesn't rust. Now this Volvo comes with one mounting bold and there's multiple holes to place that in there, so as long as it lines up with one of them. There we go. That was that little 6-mm bolt with a 10-mm socket head. 10-mm socket. Let's just bottom it out.

Now before we install the caliper bracket, I'm going to use my brush and I'm going to clean the spot where the actual pads ride because you want those to have a smooth gliding mechanism. They have to move back and forth or they'll actually wear out unevenly. Perhaps you've had brake pads that do that. Well, the key was is that they didn't slide in the bracket. If you didn't have a caliper problem, they weren't sliding properly. Now this is the mounting bolt for the caliper bracket to knuckle. Remember when I took this apart, it was a lot of force, so I'm going to clean all the old thread lock out of there and add just a dab of new stuff before I remount this.

Here's the slider for the caliper, and this is what it looks like prior to cleaning it and it's just all filled up with gunk. That will not slide in a nice even stroke through that caliper bushing. I took a wire wheel brush to it and I cleaned up all that gunk. We'll just apply some brand new caliper grease so it slides properly. I'm just going to take a pair of welder's clamps and I'm going to push my piston back. This has ABS, so we can't just push the piston back without opening that bleeder screw. I broke it free to make sure it breaks free prior to doing any repairs on this. I'm just bottoming it out. I'm not actually pushing that piston back yet. It's an 11-mm socket. I'm going to break open that bleeder screw. I've already got a catch bucket down below so I'm going to make sure I aim for that.

Take the pliers and start compressing the piston. I'm going to bottom this piston all the way out. It's a good time, also, that I can actually look for leaks around the dust boot, or I'm going to make sure the piston doesn't have any slag to it like hold up and doesn't compress all the way. It looks good. I don't see any fluid coming out. There's no tears in the dust boot and the pistons flush. Now with that clamped tight holding that piston in, I can close up my bleeder screw. Just snug it because we're going to open it up again to gravity bleed it once the shoes are on. I can disconnect my clamp.

The inner pad, line up those three springs. I like to do it with one even push. The outer pad, I can sit it right in here, right in the groove. Here's the caliper grease that I'm going to put inside that slider boot on both caliper sliders. I'm just going to coat that rubber piece. Now I can mount that right up and get my sliders that I cleaned. Here's my new sliders. I'm just going to add a little grease to them, and line them right up, and slide them into that boot. Make sure I don't leave any of those bristles behind. The slider pins are an Allen head number 7, just in case you put it back in the pile and didn't know what number it was. I'll be torquing this down also. The torque spec is 22 foot-pounds, so I'm just going to bottom these out. I like to get them both started in the thread before I actually tighten them.

Now I can reassemble my ABS wire to the flex hose. I'm going to install our dust cover boots on the slider pins. Now I'm going to install the anti-rattle clip. I like to put the piece in here first. If you need to use a little hammer, feel free to tap it in. Now I'm going to install the, like that. See if I can get it to go, line up, and then I'll just tap it in. Make sure that they're flush so the bar goes behind the ears of the caliper, and hit both parts of the bracket. That's called an anti-rattle clip. It's stops that caliper from flexing.

When I push the E-brake cables up in, they came up actually almost all the way up here but, of course, they didn't go into the proper guide space, so I need to manipulate them back down. Maybe I don't have to use the wire. Maybe I can slide them in without using it, but it's, kind of, a tight spot. It's good to have that backup of that wires that's already guided in there. That's what it looks like. There's no real housing for that to clip into. As long as that washer is flush up against that bracket, it's in straight and it's lined up. That's the way it goes. We've successfully fished out E-brake, parking brake, cables through, so now we're just going to disconnect our feed wire that got them through the hole. I have to say, it really helped. Saved a lot of headache and aggravation.

Now we're ready to fish in our front cable. I'm going to push it all the way. It's on its minimal, it's like the most slack it can be. Guide it into the hook that way. There we go. Wonderful. Now we're ready to adjust this. I'm going to get a socket or a ratchet and start [inaudible 00:33:34] that. I'm going to make sure the E-brake handle is all the way in the downward position, and it's a 10-mm socket, and I'm just going to start tightening up this front cable.

Now, you've got to take into consideration they're new shoes and new cables. Let's pull up on that brake and see where it grabs. Release it. I'm going to do this a couple of times because I want these cables to definitely settle in where they are. I'm going to try it a couple of more times. I've only got, it's about mid way, which is good for the wheels because then the wheels are going to not drag. I just want to give it a couple of more snugs. Okay. This clip is important because it stops that nut from backing off. That feels good right there. What I'm going to do is set my vehicle up and apply my E-brake and see the drag, see when they stop and adjust it that way. There is no E-brake shoe, or parking brake shoe, on this Volvo back in the wheels. This is the only adjustment.

We're going to put the console back in and I'm going to guide that down this way and put the E-brake handle through. Don't forget to guide the casing, the plastic casing, through. Just take a good look around. I'm going to line up the front here. I'm going to reconnect my electro part in the back, connect it, and I'm going to put this tab in on this piece right in there. It did, locked right down in. Reinstall this plate. The ears go down below here on these tabs.

Now we can slide these clips in. That is for another vehicle with a different style rear seat. It also holds the carpet down. Now I'm going to place this center console in these cut-out slots. It's pretty easy. It slides right down in. Make sure everything is out of it's way. Looks good. I'm going to check the back mounting bolts and they line right up, so I'm going to install those first, and that's the T25. Install our rubber mat. We are done back here. Let's move up to the front. We've got those two mounting bolts, the same size, T25. Okay. Now let's install our shifter trim, so it goes in that angle. Remember this piece just popped right up in there. Let's guide it over it and just snap it in. Everything is still connected wire wise. I never took it apart.

We'll just slide it right down, and it clicks into place. Pretty simple piece. It's got the little clips here, make sure the rubber piece is facing upward so the pen can slide down in, line up, and just snap it in.

I'm going to put the side panel on. As you can see, it's got ears that face forward. You put them in the slot, and just going to slide it forward. We have the lock in the back. There we go. Now you can take a flathead screwdriver and turn this right here and lock it in. Repeat that on the other side.

Now we're going to install our door trim pieces that we took up. This piece slides up in like that, and then you can guide each piece right into the spot where the clip is. Just push it down firmly. Repeat the process on the other side. There we go. I'm going to guide those spots right in like that. Take your red pieces and lock them down with a push-down motion. Then you just close the seat down. Guide those plastic loops right into those latches, make sure it pushes all the way down, and grab your red locks, snap them down in, get a firm push down and you're all set.

Now we're just going to guide this plastic three ears pieces into those slots and there's three on this side also. I want you to line them all up. It, pretty much, just clicks down, and you're ready to go. Release the E-brake lever and it's in place.

Now I'm going to open the bleeder screw and I'm going to let this gravity bleed until all the air comes out. I've got a steady stream of brake fluid with no air bubbles, so I'm ready to close off this bleeder screw. Just snug it. Now we clean that up, and put the boot back on.

After I've done the brakes, I'm going to check my reservoir and add brake fluid. Now the reservoir is located right here in front of the driver's seat of the engine compartment. You can see the cap clearly. It says, "brake fluid," and it tells you DOT 4 brake fluid. This is a European car. I'll take the cover off. I can see the markings on the side. There's a max and a min, and I'm right at the minimal line, so now I'm just going to add some fluid, top it off. Now that the level is at the proper level, I'm going reinstall my cap. I'm going to go in, pump my brakes, see how the pedal feels, and see if I need to do any additional brake bleeding.

Brake pedal is nice and firm. It's time to put the tire on and road test it. Now I'm going to install my tire. Now I'll put all the lug nuts, studs shall I say, in. Just tighten them up by hand. We'll lower the vehicle and we'll torque it to specs. Wheel torque for this vehicle is 103 foot-pounds. I'm going to torque it in a star pattern.

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