Mazda did a really poor job of anticipating and preventing corrosion in their early-90s cars. One of the ways this lack of foresight manifests itself is in the brakes – namely the mechanical rear disc emergency brake or parking brake of the Miata and Protege. The Miata/Protege emergency brake is built into the rear calipers and is actuated by lever which is pulled by the “ebrake” cable. Over time the lever on the brake caliper will tend to stick despite a strong spring that is supposed to return it to an unlocked position. If it sticks badly enough the only solution is to buy a new caliper, but less than $5 and a little creativity can fix this problem if you catch it early-on.

What you will need:

• two somewhat stiff extension springs from a hardware store — about 2″ long before tensioning is acceptable
• stiff wire – A coathanger will probably work, I used welding rod. Zipties would probably do the trick in a pinch.
• tin snips, lineman’s pliers, or something that will cut the stiff wire
• needle-nose pliers

What we’re trying to do is set the spring up opposite the direction of pull of the parking brake cable. The hook or loop of the spring can be made to securely grab the lever on the caliper with a little bending. You may have to remove the cable end from its slot in the lever momentarily to loop the spring on.

Tension the spring by using the stiff wire to tie it in the direction that pulls away from the parking brake cable. The Protege has a conveniently-located small unused hole in the tab that attaches the rear strut to the wheel upright. It can be found in-between the two large bolts that clamp the strut to the upright. The Miata may not have similar (I haven’t looked), but a little ingenuity will probably yield a solution.

I used 308L stainless steel welding rod because I had some handy and this is a high-corrosion environment, which Mazda clearly overlooked. The springs I’m using will corrode well before this welding rod, but both will probably outlast the car or at least these calipers because of additional design failures on Mazda’s part.

Clint mumbled something about having heard of this fix before. It’s no stroke of genius so that’s hardly surprising, but this was all done independently and thus someone else’s method may be slightly different.