Parking Brake
 

I very rarely use the parking brake in my car...99 E320 Wagon W210. Probably only 1 or twice a year. A brake shop once told me that parking brakes should applied periodically to avoid siezing. Any thoughts

3star

My belief is that the parking brake should be applied every time you put the car in park - whether you think are on a level surface or not. It's an easy habit to get into. Using your transmission as a parking brake is not good for it. If you get in the habit of doing this you will never have to worry about it seizing up.

To put it in layman's terms, mechanical things forget to work if they aren't exercised enough. Using it often breaks any microcorrosion and moves any lube around. Left unused it can result in large scale corrosion until the system siezes.