The most ironic thing was that my brother hated that bike and always wanted our father to get him a new one. If he had ridden that bike just two weeks more, he would have gotten what he wanted.


I used to have an '87 Ford Taurus. The cable connecting the parking brake and the parking brake lever came apart. The dealership said that the whole dashboard would have to come out to replace it.

As it happened, I was working on creating Ford dealership repair training courseware at that time. I asked our expert and he concurred, so it wasn't the dealer making up stories.

But I looked at the parking brake release more closely and noticed that the linkage on the parking brake side looked exactly like the receptor for the end of a bicycle brake cable. I tried one, it fit perfectly. I just removed the brake lever T handle, fed the bicycle brake cable up through the hole, and coiled the rest of the cable in a loop, and that was the parking brake release for the rest of the time I had the car.