You cant make this up

[andylarson]

This may be useful to Winnie owners and for every one else it may be a good head scratcher.

My 2008 adventurer limited on the UFO chassis has an 8.1 vortex. Certain Winnie's have problems with an over engineered parking brake system known to be problematic. I had never had a problem- until today. Read on.

I could not get the parking brake to disengage. Turn engine on, shift to drive, attempt to disengage, swear, turn engine off, repeat.

DW says let try to put jacks down and retract them in case the system thinks the jacks are down. Tried it and no go.

We shift through gears, on off, etc,etc etc.

DW looks at dash and sees the seatbelt indicator flashing and suggests i fasten seat belt. I comply. No change and the seatbelt flasher continues to flash. DW clicks the passenger belt, no go and belt flasher still flashing.

Now she accidentally moves the passenger seat to face forward. The seat had been turned about 20degrees.

With the Passenger seat now facing forward the parking brake releases when I try again!

Who would have thought.

You can't make this up.

[bdickson]

Kinda like "seatbacks and tray tables in the upright and locked position".

[J Birder]

Your tale of an over engineered system just brought back a memory of a good story. Many years ago, my boss bought one of the first Porsche Boxters imported into the U.S.

A week after he got it, he came into the office and forgot to turn the lights off. Needless to say, when it was time to go home, the battery was completely dead. I offered to jump it for him, but there was one problem. The battery was accessed through the trunk. Of course the trunk release button, being electric, wouldn't work because the battery was dead.

A quick call to the dealer and we had the solution. There is an emergency trunk release cable in the wheel well. We just needed to jack it up, pull the wheel off and then pull the release cable. Of course, his jack was locked in the trunk, so we couldn't jack up the car in order to remove the wheel and unlock the trunk.

This still wasn't real serious. We got my jack out. It had a bit of a different shape, but we managed to make it fit closely enough that we figured that we could get such a light car lifted up.

Problem solved? Oops! Not quite. Each wheel had one anti-theft locking lug nut that required a specially shaped socket to remove it. Would you like to guess where the special socket was stored? Of course! It was locked in the trunk.

Another increasingly angry call to the dealer only confirmed that he didn't have one of the special sockets in stock. It took almost two days to have one flown in.

Joel

[RoyM]

German engineering and I am of German descent at it's finest.

[UFO Pilot]

I am going to try this on my UFO and see if it works the same way.

[Toyduck]

Originally Posted by andylarson

This may be useful to Winnie owners and for every one else it may be a good head scratcher.

My 2008 adventurer limited on the UFO chassis has an 8.1 vortex. Certain Winnie's have problems with an over engineered parking brake system known to be problematic. I had never had a problem- until today. Read on.

I could not get the parking brake to disengage. Turn engine on, shift to drive, attempt to disengage, swear, turn engine off, repeat.

DW says let try to put jacks down and retract them in case the system thinks the jacks are down. Tried it and no go.

We shift through gears, on off, etc,etc etc.

DW looks at dash and sees the seatbelt indicator flashing and suggests i fasten seat belt. I comply. No change and the seatbelt flasher continues to flash. DW clicks the passenger belt, no go and belt flasher still flashing.

Now she accidentally moves the passenger seat to face forward. The seat had been turned about 20degrees.

With the Passenger seat now facing forward the parking brake releases when I try again!

Who would have thought.

You can't make this up.

I think I would hesitate turning the seat while you are driving..

[Dunner]

Originally Posted by andylarson

This may be useful to Winnie owners and for every one else it may be a good head scratcher.

I remember reading something like about a year ago. Don't remember the details, though.