ccec

Here is something that I have not thought of together : Automatic Parking Brakes and Winter car washes

In Canada, we have freezing temperature in winter, and every time you wash your car, the parking brakes will still be wet when you get home (I am not far from the car wash), and when you turn the car off, the parking brakes are automatically set, and overnight, they will be frozen, and come morning, you cannot not back out of the garage as the parking brakes will not disengage. You have to really gun the engine to un-stuck them, which is really dangerous and scary to shoot out of the garage in reverse onto a snow covered driveway....

I have seen somewhere here that you can prevent the auto engagement by pulling on the parking brake lever while opening the door... but that video seems to be a different car... I have a 2017 E400.... I will try the trick anyway, but would love to see if anybody has a good work around. Please do not suggest that I stop washing the car in the winter as I need to get the road salt off the body.

Thank you...

ua549

When you get home from the wash, park your car and then manually release the parking brake using the lever.

Egonvdv

ccec

Thank you for the response... I thought that the parking brake will re-engage when you open the door after shutting the car.... Just tested last night... as long as you release the parking brakes before shutting off the car, it will stay released, so I should not have frozen parking brakes again. Thank you everybody.

c4004matic

mine froze after sitting in the parking lot in a snow storm

ccec

Sorry to hear that... so how did you resolved the problem... just in case I forgot to release the parking brakes the next time I wash my car...

c4004matic

Just gave it a little gas forwards and backwrds.

gfmohn

We have freezing weather in New England, too. It never occurred to me that I could wash my car in below freezing weather. I'd be surprised if our car washes are open. Eastern Massachusetts residents are wusses about anything involved with winter. (I'm from upstate NY.) The first snow or ice of the year is always madness in the streets. But if I were a car wash owner in New England, I wouldn't trust the burnouts that staff those things to knock down the big icicles that would otherwise form in the overhead.

BeachBunny

I thank you for posting this. Both myself and my fiancé were raised in tropical areas and wouldn't have ever thought of this happening.

I've driven rental cars in snow & ice (even black ice) and learned that things freeze if left in a car overnight. You learn something every day.