I have taken my air bag off before. Make sure the battery is disconnected, before taking off the air bag system. Then make sure you hook everything back up again before connecting the battery. If you don't have the air bag connected when you hook up your battery, you will mess up the air bag system, causing it to be disabled. I had to take mine out to get to my blend door actuator.

Hi William, it's been 3 years and I don't own the car anymore, but this is what I remember. I believe I put the front cable on the equalizer and pulled hard on the equalizer toward the back of the car, pulling the front cable toward the back of the car. I then clamped vice grips onto the cable right behind the hole in the metal it goes through, so the vice grips held the cable in place (so the spring in the brake assembly couldn't pull it forward again). I then took the equalizer off the front cable and attached the back cables. I then pulled the equalizer forward enough that it reached the front cable, which I eventually got through the notch in the equalizer. You could perhaps use more vice grips on the back cables too, in order to have both of your hands free to attach the front cable. I remember it took me some time, several trials, and getting "mad at it" enough to pull the equalizer hard enough to move the cables. If that doesn't work let me know why. If you can't pull the front cable backward maybe the brake assembly is somehow stuck?

This was a 1996.

There are probably a number of possibilities. The teeth that keep the pedal in place (and the parking brake on) could be worn. It is also possible that the circular spring is hitting the release cable's lever arm.

+UMatt teeths are fine. mybe that other thing and i forget to mantion its hard to push the pedal.

The reason I had to replace my cable was that when we got the van the parking brake pedal was hard to push and soon the cable broke, but I'm not sure why. It may be that something in the pedal assembly is hitting the release lever arm on the way down, and putting pressure on it that causes the release lever to let the pedal to pop back up. But it's really hard to know without seeing in there while it's happening. But hopefully this video shows you how you could remove everything to see the problem. The back brakes might also need general "cleaning." If they are jammed up from being old that could make the cable hard to move and the pedal hard to push, and the parking brake wouldn't hold well.