the title says all , i heard it somewhere but dunno what it is

E Brake = Emergency Brake = Handbrake = Parking Brake (?)

Emergency brake/Parking brake, that acts only on the rear wheels.

E brake = emergency brake
when in neutral, hold it and your car wont roll down a hill

So it's just handbrake?

or eletronic brake

It stands for electric brake, which is an electro-mechanically activated handbrake.

It would be wrong to call it an emergency brake, because there is almost no situation possible where you'd use the handbrake (or e-brake) to slow down in the event of brake failure due to the liklihood of the rear wheels locking.

Very few cars have e-brakes, most have a manually activated (cable) handbrake. Some act on the rear discs (either using a mechanism in the calipers or a separate pair of calipers), some act on a drum inside the main disc, whilst others (drum rear brake cars) just have a mechanism for applying the shoes to the drum...

Tristan, do you suggest we plummet off the side of a mountain, rather than apply our handbrake slowly and carefully?

How often to people have main brake failure on the mountain pass? Not very often. To imply that the 'e' stands for emergency solely for the 0.0000001% of cars that suffer brake failure/fade on a mountain pass is just silly.

Why not call it a p-brake, because it's primary use in 99.999999% of cars is to stop a car moving when parked.

I just think 'emergency' is a silly, and technically incorrect, term for it, that's all. But then, the majority of abbreviations exist for stupid people, and as such the stupid people make up what it stands for (that's why they're stupid), and after a while their made up answer sticks. I think a stupid person (probably an American demo racer) thought it up once whilst swigging moonshine, and the hillbillies made it stick over time without realised what dunces they looked like...

another well thought out and appropriate explaination by the legend that is tristycliff

Quote from tristancliffe :

Why not call it a p-brake, because it's primary use in 99.999999% of cars is to stop a car moving when parked.

Because in english it's named after one of its purposes (maybe its main purpose?), not after what it's primarily used for. And one of its main purposes is obviously to stop the car in case of main brake failure. At least that's what I've heard and it would explain why it is mandatory for an e-brake to operate indepently of the main brakes.

In my car the hand brake works on the front wheels, but there's a good reason for it too

Quote from tristancliffe :

How often to people have main brake failure on the mountain pass? Not very often.....

It sure helped me coming home from the girlfriends house in 1988. Imagine a 1979 Ford Fairmont Futura and you are driving 60 mph down hill. At the bottom is a stop sign onto a 5 lane highway (4 running, 1 turning lane) that is heavily used with the commuters going from a small town into the big city for work. There I am, I go around the turn running about 60 mph. Plenty of space ahead before it dumps onto the highway. I put my foot on the brakes and they just go to the floor. Nothing there. I later find out the brake lines were split. Hmm, 60 mph downhill towards a stop where it empties out into rush hour traffic.... Yeah, I was saying "Pppfffttt, emergency brake, who needs that. No one ever uses the parking brake as an emergency brake...."

It doesn't have to be on a mountain pass, it could be anywhere. Slowing the car down using a brake is definitely preferable to slowing it down using a tree/sign/other car.

It's not that difficult to apply the handbrake without locking the wheels.

But you're right that it's mainly used for parking.

mrodgers - you should have been a man about it, stamped a whole through the bottom of your car with your feet and used your shoes on the ground as brakes. You know the chicks always go for the guys with bigger balls than brains.

Quote from Bob Smith :

You know the chicks always go for the guys with bigger balls than brains.

Which is why I've bought one of these!







What?

Chicks can buy big plastic balls in every s-shop. I would not be proud if I had biggest dildo in town with tiny 'mr. shorty'.

Offtopic- i remember when i was about 8-9 and i was in the car with my dad at night and we drove past a big black car in the middle of the road which looked like it rolled off the sloped drive in front of it, so i asked my dad to pull over and i gone and told the guy, he was very grateful as he bought the car that day, so he gave me a pat on the shoulder, i was so pleased with myself

Quote from tristancliffe :

Which is why I've bought one of these!







What?

You can have that one, mine is bigger

Gotta love those handbrake discussions at RSC, what was it 20/80 distribution in handbrake ?

Quick upgrade later, this is mine

Continuing the off-topic ness: - I win?

Quote from tristancliffe :

Quick upgrade later, this is mine

Aww, that was completely unfair, how you are going to put that to your backyard and show it to your gf?

Ultimate handbrake discussion read and learn

Bob, I thought you would need no bigger balls when you have that blue name

Quote from tristancliffe :

It stands for electric brake, which is an electro-mechanically activated handbrake.

I have to pull you up on this Tris

Most handbrakes are just a lever with a cable (not the copper type ) attached that is directly or indirectly connected to the rear brake caliper/piston, to give the impression that electricity is involved strikes me as a bit odd. Sure some modern cars use "fly by wire" technology but I think the old fashon type are safer.
And the light that comes on in the dash is just operated via a button switch.



SD.

Of course I can show it to my gf - it's only 450 pixels wide, which is still bigger than yours! In fact, mine remains bigger than Bob's too, muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Edit@Dave: Yes, correct - most are cable with a little to-ground switch for the warning light. But I'm fairly sure that some (some Mercs?) have an electro-mechanical parking brake (not the silly foot operated thing, but that's just wacky Germanic thinking for you ), which is where the term e-brake originally derrived.

I don't claim 'to know' the 'truth', this is just my opinion based on what I know (or think I know) to be fact.

Edit2@Nuse: Yes, handbrakes are cable operated. e-brakes are not. A cable operated handbrake isn't (as it contains no electro-... bit) an e-brake... It's just a misused term nowadays. Maybe it's me being an irritating nit-picking ****** (insert six letters of your choice here), like in the interia/flywheel/mass thread.

so .. if you say e stands for electronic

is that where the whole button part of the handbrake came from?

i'm at such a loss, because every e-brake i've seen is done by a pulley and a wire to the rear wheels

E-Brake, emergancy brake. Used on Standard transmition cars to lock car into position when parked. Used in drifting to lock up back tires to cause sliding. Pull lever, cable runs to the rear brakes locking them in place. Simple as that. Some new ones are electronic, but still do the same thing really.
~Bryan~