Hello all!

I am posting for a bud of mine who has a 2000 Neon SE and who has recently had problems with two things:

1. We had a flood-out last year and he ended up going through a gigantic puddle and flooding out his car. Long story short he had hydro-lock and a mess of problems. Now we have it running in tip-top shape but his airbag light stays on all the time. Does this need to be reset or does he have to buy a whole new module? And he is worried his airbag will not work..

2. We changed his brakes all around and ever since the above flooding had a problem with his parking brake (got some mud in there or something). Now his parking brake does not work at all - is there a way to tighten it back up or does he have to run a whole new one?


Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

Disconnect the battery for a couple minutes and reconnect it to see if the light comes back on. If it does, there's a problem. The sensor for the airbag is on the floor hump where the shifter is located. Perhaps that got wet in the flood and screwed something up.

The parking brake cable should have an adjustment under the car or at the e-brake handle.

 

Apparently there is no adjuster that we can see. The stupid airbag light stays on all the time now even after the battery is disconnected...

 

There should be an adjuster for the ebrake, I know on my 98 I think it on the drives side. If the air bag module got wet try replacing it.

 

Sounds like one of three things: the parking brake shoes are not adjusted tight enough to the drum, the rear parking brake cables are frozen from rust or mud, or the cables were not hooked up correctly to the rear brakes. The parking brake cable adjuster is automatic and integrated into the lever.

Does he have drum or disc brakes on the rear? If drums, did you manually adjust the shoes tight to the drum after replacing them? If not, that would be the first thing to try. The self-adjusters won't take up excessive slack quickly, if ever.

If the shoes are adjusted correctly, see if the parking cables move when the brake lever is set and released. If not, you may want to see if the slack from being released shows up in the front cable at the lever. If so, the rear cables are probably frozen and should be replaced. Should be pretty easy to confirm whether or not the cables are free by doing something like disconnecting them from the rear brakes and pulling on them while someone else moves the brake lever back and forth.

If the cables move and the shoes are tight on the drum, I'd recheck the installation on the shoes against the manual just to make sure something wasn't put in incorrectly.