My parking brake quit working in my truck last week, and I finally got time today to find out what was wrong. It turns out that one of the brackets that holds the entire assembly together is broken, so I have to replace the unit as a whole.

I called the Ford dealer, just for laughs, to see how much a new assembly costs. Well, they don't even carry them anymore, which isn't that surprising, even though they used the same assembly on all Ford trucks between something like 1970 and 1989. So I'll have to go to a junkyard and find one that's in reasonably good shape. It took me over an hour to remove mine, 'cause the bolts that go through the firewall are nearly impossible to get to from the outside. So I expect I'll have to spend several more hours removing an assembly from a junked truck and installing it on mine. Oh joy.