It wasn't too hard to straighten out the bracket somewhat but I couldn't get the cable housing under the clip at the top of the photo. My car wasn't jacked up high enough to use two hand so I had to zip-tie it for now. You can also see return spring, which is actually pulling in the wrong direction. It's supposed to pull that lever towards the rear of the car, not forward, to keep slack out of the cable and help return the parking brake handle. When I researched the proper spring setup I found it attaches to a hole in the frame rail. My car has sub-frame connectors welded in so that hole appears to be covered up. I had to leave this spring off for now--it doesn't even look to be the right one.
Here's the rear disc caliper showing how the parking brake cable attaches, right behind the coiled spring. Since all this looks like it's hooked up correctly, including the new cable, I'll assume everything is good to go and just needs to be adjusted. Before I started working on this the parking brake handle would just come all the way out with very little resistance. It did hold the car but only on a flat surface. So all I did was tighten up the equalizer bracket to take out most of the slack in the cable. Bingo! Now the parking brake works, as well as it was designed to work. All I have left to do is fix the return spring.
You can also see in the first photo that the exhaust pipe (among other things) is covered with oil. It's a very heavy, clean oil that I'm certain is coming from the transmission. I haven't been able to pinpoint where it's leaking, but I'm hoping it's from the top cover. I was told the transmission has been recently rebuild and it's common for Ford Toploaders to leak if the wrong top cover gasket is used. The top cover has a vent hole in it that needs to be baffled by the gasket or else it will leak. So I'm hoping that either the gasket is wrong or even absent so my leak is relatively cheap to fix. The problem is I will probably have to drop the transmission in order to replace the gasket. This also involves removing the exhaust and driveshaft which doesn't sound fun. I've read it may be possible to actually reach the bolts on the top cover while the transmission is still in place. I'll have to check it out next time I jack the car up high enough.
