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I just saw Mendel Leisk's post #19, "Tires for HCH2" http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41279&page=2 mentioning the number of clicks to lock the parking brake.

Mine locks at 4 clicks. I might get 5 if I really reefed on it. I'm now wondering where other people's are set and if adjusting to the "proper" setting has helped glide and/or gas mileage.

I had the car in this afternoon for some unrelated work and asked them to adjust the parking brake to spec. I was told that the 8-10 click number was most likely a mis-translation from the Japanese and that he would be happy to show me the click range on any of the Civics on the lot. Long story short, I didn't get the adjustment. Granted, it was fairly late on a Friday afternoon so I can't really blame the guy :)

I bought this car in the spring of 2006. Lovely machine. Never could figure out pulse and glide though. When I take my foot off the gas, there is no glide. I just slow down. Never thought to check for wheel drag. Temperatures here are now running -20 to -10 Celsius. I think I'll wait until May or June. Another couple of months at this point aren't going to hurt anything.

I would be interested in any feedback though. I may end up doing this adjustment myself.

Thanks

you can't do pulse 'n' glide on a civic hybrid by lifting foot off gas, because that forces 'regen'. What you have to do is hold the gas pedal slightly to get glide

The adjuster nut is in the center console. It's been a while, so I'm a little rusty on specifics, but getting the center console off is doable without too much hassle. I believe you start with the frontmost piece, a little black cubby hole, and then the main piece, surrounding the shifter.

To get that main piece off your first need to remove the shifter trim. Just use finger pressure and a bit of fingernailing to coax it up.

Once the trim is off I believe you can also depress the white tang that allows you to shift into neutral without engine on. Not sure, but I believe this is almost necessity in order to finess the center console up and off. I'm not sure, but I believe there's a few retainer screws on the sides, just look around.

Since you're going to be applying/releasing the parking brake, and the car's in neutral, you really need to do this on level ground and block the wheels.

Anyway, after removing all this nonsense, the shifter adjuster nut is down the driver's side of the console. It's all hooked up to the emergency brake lever, obviously. It's a fairly long reach: I forget what I used exactly, but I think at least a 6" socket extension is needed, maybe more. The nut's on the end of a threaded rod, which projects out a bit, so a deep socket is more-or-less necessity.

Again, I'm fuzzy on socket size, might be 12mm or 14mm. I'd suggest to dig down to it, check it out, and then do a run to a hardware supply if you need something. The car's driveable with console removed, if needed.

I believe backing off the nut counterclockwise loosens the parking brake, but check it out.

I doubt 8~10 clicks is a mis-print. It works well in that range, and gives some buffer, ie: you're assured the brakes are fully released with the parking brake fully down. And it doesn't have to raised extremely high to lock.

Sorry about that "take my foot off the gas" quote. I probably should have said "feather the gas pedal". I've got 142,000km on this thing with a lifetime average of 4.8 L/100km. I just think I should be doing better. Every once in a while I get substantially better gas mileage and I have yet to figure out what's different. My driving style hasn't really changed and it's driving me nuts!

Thank you for the detail Mendel. The local dealer (who I really like dealing with) photocopied "Parking Brake Inspection and Adjustment" for me. It includes pictures of what needs to be done but they are small and not clear. Your description will help a lot to show me what I'm dealing with. It's a two step process involving both the parking brake setting and re-adjusting the rear brakes. I've never looked at disc brakes before so this will be something new. I've got the tools but will probably have to pick up a metric deep socket.

The wealth of expertise here is wonderful. I've never really had a question before that hasn't been covered in detail if I do a bit of searching. Thank you.

The adjustment they're referring to at the back (drum) brake is (I believe) the "star" adjuster. Basically: there's a pin betweeen the two shoes, with an internal threaded portion, so that it's length can change. There's a small wheel encompassing the turnable portion with star teeth. Adacent to the wheel is a tang engaging the teeth. The tang goes up/down with each brake depression, and if there's been wear of the shoes, the tang's travel will rotate the star wheel to increase the length of the rod.

Long story short: as the shoes get thinner, the tang turns the star wheel, increase the rod length, keeping the shoes close to the drum.

There's a little access hole on the back of the drum brake enclosure. Theoretically, you can reach a slim flat-blade screw in there and turn the star wheel.

Now first off, if the star wheel and tang combo is behaving properly, I don't think you should need to do any manual intervention. And secondly: the few times I've tried this procedure, not a whole lot of anything happened. Even pulling the drum off, that contraption is very hard to turn.

So, the few times I've adjusted parking brake I did just the nut adjustment, at the center console. And really the only time I needed to adjust parking brake travel was after a dealer visit.

I'm not sure where they were doing the adjustment, ie: at the star wheel or the centre console nut, or but: when I got the car back it was invariably super tight: one click, two at the most, and it was locked or near locked. I'm not sure how they rationalize this.

Maybe thinking "we better get it tight while we have the chance, who knows when it will be adjusted again"?

Just had a talk with the dealer. Next service schedule will probably fall in mid-January and this one includes a brake inspection, so I'll get them to do that parking brake adjustment. I may have to twist arms :)