The way I started doing it is position the car, then with it still in gear, set the brake, and then put it in park. Should I be putting it in neutral after I set it so it can rest on the parking brake before I put it in park? Or is it okay to just set it and directly put it in park after that? I don't want there to be any unnecessary stress on the parking pawl, even though I generally don't park on any steep roads.
This has worked for me for many years and many different cars
1. Press down on the brake pedal
2. Engage the parking brake
3. Place the trans in Park if Auto/Neutral if Manual
4. Release brake pedal
No stress on parking pawl, no chance of car movement
This has been discussed before. See below:
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/saving-your-transmission/#post-107171
If I park on an unfamiliar slope, I'll engage the parking brake, put my car in neutral and take my foot off the brakes to make sure it's holding. If it is, I'll put it in park. My driveway is sloped, and so is my work parking lot, those have become muscle memory.
This process is not really necessary, but I do it anyways. Typically you feel the brake engage when the lever becomes hard to pull or step on within a short travel distance. If it has no resistance until an extreme is reached, the parking brake needs adjusted, or you might need brakes changed. My truck was this way and it would get stuck. I replaced the shoes and half of the cable mechanism and it works great.
it's a good way to test if your parking brake is working properly and is able to hold the vehicle. I found out mine was not. I serviced the adjuster and now it's tight as it should be.
The parking brake cable sticking was the 1st actual car question of mine that Scotty answered on video. I got lucky and only the driver's side cable was causing it to stick. Doing that little test is how I learned that drums stop a car more readily going forward than backward. Facing downhill, the badly working parking brake would grab better than facing uphill. Haha.
Imho, the best way to use the parking brake is to actually use it. There are a ton of folks that don’t use a parking brake, which puts unnecessary strain on the transmission, like you said.
I’ll taking using the parking brake in a nearly any safe manner over not using it all.
I’m sure there is a “better” way to use the brake, but what matters most is to just use it.
Putting your car in neutral is the only way to truly know if it is resting 100% on the parking brake.
Search before making a new post PLEASE. This has been endlessly discussed here.
Sorry about that.
Mods: feel free to delete this post if you want, I wasn't able to figure out how to do so.