Like how does the brake just stay on what brake parks the car what makes it different from the reguler brake
In: Engineering
When you park a car, you’re generally supposed to use a brake that is called the handbrake in the UK. In the US, I believe it’s called the e-brake (short for emergency brake), or the…wait for it… parking brake. Apparently in the US, loads of folk don’t use this. Instead, they rely on the gears jamming the wheels, basically. (I’m guessing the reason for the difference is related to the fact that US cars are usually automatic, so have a mode for parking, called park. In the UK, most folk drive manual cars, so this doesn’t exist. You can basically imitate it by parking in gear. But you’re still supposed to use the brake in the US too.) But how does the hand brake work and why is it different from the foot brake?
Simple answer, a ratchet. The foot brake is essentially some pads that move when you press the brake pedal. The pedal pulls a wire which makes the brake pads pinch together and grab the wheel. It’s a bit like the grabber tools that people use for picking litter or if they can’t bend down.
The hand brake is different. It has a ratchet mechanism. That’s a bit like one part that slides across a sort of gear where all the teeth point in one direction. It’s easy for the part to slide across the teeth one way, but it gets stuck when it tries to slip back. When you hear people part in TV or film and there’s that crunch sound, that’s the brake lever slipping across the teeth in the ratchet. This keeps the brake in place. When you want the car to move again, there’s a button on the brake lever that you press. This releases the lever from the ratchet and allows the brake to be released. Arguably, you’re actually supposed to use the button when applying the brake too, so you don’t scrape the teeth down to the point where they don’t work. So you shouldn’t really hear that sound in films! But it’s a bit hit or miss whether people do this or not.
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