davids,

vanagon parking brake in theory applies braking to both rears. Mis-
adjustment of brakes may mean one drum gets more brake pressure than
the other. Bentley shows procedure fro adjustment.

crawl under van and you will see where parking brake cable/rod
connects to the 2 cables leading to drums. Rod is threaded to adjust
that equalising bar.

as an aside, 2wd vanagons have a pretty flaky plastic clip holding
parking brake cables under the trailing arms. They seem to break
allowing cable to sage there, and potentially get snagged by, for
example, a branch on the dirt road.

syncros have a much stronger attachment device to trailing arms

alistair

On 3-Jul-10, at 7:03 PM, David Beierl wrote:

At 08:51 PM 7/3/2010 Saturday, Dave Mcneely wrote:
> When I set the brake, the van won't move (in 1st gear, manual
> transmission).  However, I raised the front end a few days ago.  The
> parking brake was on, but the front wheels spun freely.  Right, or
> wrong?  Van brakes perfectly well, but the parking brake does not
> engage the front.

Parking brake works only on the rear brakes, and without looking at
the setup I'll guess that it probably works only on one of the shoes.

That's been pretty much standard for parking brakes for the last
fifty years.  On vehicles with disk brakes all around it may work
differently.

Yours,
d