You can make parking brake adjustments to your Ford Taurus easily once you have a special tool called a cable tension gauge. Save yourself time and money making the adjustment at home, instead of taking your Ford Taurus to the mechanic. You should adjust the parking brake when your car starts to slip down the hill when it is parked on a slope. The technique below applies to the Ford Taurus from years 1996 to 1998.
Release the parking brake pedal to make sure it is disengaged. Put your Ford Taurus in "N" for neutral.
Raise your Ford Taurus rear wheels in the air using your jack and support the rear wheels with the jack stands.
Get underneath the vehicle and locate the parking brake cables. There is a cable coming from each rear wheel and meet in the middle with an adjuster nut.
Use the cable tension gauge 021-00018 or another tension gauge to measure the parking brake adjuster nut against the rear parking brake cable adjuster. Follow your tension gauge instructions to measure 18 to 26 pounds of tension for your 1996 year Ford Taurus and 34 to 46 pounds of tension for your years 1997 to 1998 Ford Taurus.
Press in on the parking brake foot pedal to the ground and then release the parking brake pedal.
Verify the rear wheels spin freely when the parking brake pedal is fully released.
Lower your Ford Taurus using the jack and remove the jack stands from the rear wheels.
