I don't explain very well, wish I could put arrows on the picture. On the very left of the picture is the end of the cable with the hole in it that hooks over the arm. The cable is then covered by a rubber boot which goes up to the metal piece with the fingers. The fingers come out from there and touch the caliper piston side of the L bracket. On the other side of the L bracket is the crimped area used for the stop. You would pull the cable out of the bracket toward the right side of the photo. You can see the one finger, it is toward the long section of the L bracket. The other finger is just up from the opening in the L bracket where the cable will come through. Sorry if I am a little confusing.

 

Use a hose clamp to compress all the fingers at the same time. Use some WD40 to lube it too.

 

Ok...actually doing this today. Do I try and remove the ebrake cable from the caliper first and then push the fingers in etc?
If so, how best to do this? Clamp or pull on the cable? It looks like it would be possibe half-way down arong where the side sliding door is in the Caravan.

 

I pull the caliper toward the rear of the vehicle while pushing the fingers down with a flat blade screwdriver. You can clear the bracket then the cable will go up through the slot in the bracket. Then unhook the cable from the caliper.

 

Thanks for everyone's help. I finished both rear brakes last weekend. I ended up using a hose clamp to get it started...once I had it pushed through a bit I found that an open-ended bicycle wrench was just the right thickness to keep it from slipping back while I continued to push through and finally get it out of the notch.

In terms of getting it back in, just pulling on the cable was all that was needed. Having someone to assist at this stage was the way to go though

 

I was changing the rear brakes on my 2008 caravan and found I had a caliper piston that would not turn back in. Bought a caliper and also had a difficult time removing the parking brake cable from the caliper. Glad I found this thread. Helped a lot. Here is what I had to do:

1) Make sure the bracket that goes around the cable and screws down behind the rotor is completely unfastened. You can just loosen the screw if you are changing pads, but I had to remove it to get enough slack to get the cable off.
2) use a hose clamp to compress the fingers as others have stated.
3) With the clamp on pull the cable through the L bracket as far as you can. Put a small pair of vise-grips on the cable (other side of the bracket) before removing the hose clamp.
4) The cable goes through a strap that is fastened to the frame, forward of the rear axle. I pulled that strap downward so that it was horizontal. This gave me more leverage/slack to pull the cable. Return strap to original position when done. Until I did this was not able to pull cable all the way through.
5) I also removed the small spring on top of the old caliper. Not sure if that helped, but I was trying everything to make it work.

Got it done, but I have to say this is one of the worst disk brake configurations I have seen.