I live in Quebec, Canada and bought a 2010 ford focus from an old coworker who lives in Ontario and works on cars as a hobby, in Quebec, if buying a car from another province, it needs to pass a safety check.
I went once, they gave me a list of what’s wrong, parking brake not working was part of it, me and coworker fixed all of it, took about a month, they told me more things were wrong, and that the handbrake still wasn’t working properly, went to Kenny U-pull, got a parking brake cable (apparently the problem was the drivers side one), got an entirely new parking brake arm, replaced them, now we are the week after the second inspection, went and got a 3rd inspection today and they said everything is good, BUT the parking brake still isn’t locking the wheels properly. Even though I made sure to tighten it as much as I could.
I’m lost now. The brake shoes are in good condition, cable and arm changed. When the car isn’t moving, I pull the parking brake and apply a bit of pressure on the accelerator, it holds, as long as I don’t put too much weight on the pedal, but especially if the car is already moving, even at a very low speed (like 5 miles an hour) and I pull the parking break arm, it doesn’t stop the car fast at all.
I will note that even with the service brakes, it seems I had to put quite a lot of weight on the pedal for them to brake the car enough. Do I just need to bleed the brakes? What possible issues could it be?