So I just bought an '87 5spd 4wd with the 22r. Here's a picture:



I've had it for about a week. Yesterday, the e-brake cable broke, about an inch from the cab end of the cable. I read around a bit on here and that seems like a somewhat common place for the cables to break. So, I decided to try and fix it since the remainder of the cable appears to be fine. I ended up drilling and tapping a hole for a 10-24 bolt into the end of the rod which is attached to the handle. Then, I drilled a smaller hole next to and slightly overlapping the tapped hole. I put the broken cable end (after snipping off the frayed section) down into the bottom of the the threaded hole, then I pushed it over to the smaller hole, while keeping the very end of it in the bottom of the threaded hole. I then tightened the bolt down until it squeezed the cable end in the bottom of the threaded hole. I had disconnect the other end of the cable to pull a lot of slack through into the cab, so I could make the connection.

It seems to work well so far, although I haven't really yanked on it yet. I wanted to really crank the bolt down, but right when I got it pretty tight, the head of the bolt broke off. So, it is holding, but I haven't pulled the handle any more than the absolute minimum needed to hold the truck from rolling. It does seem solid, I just don't want to load it up any more than necessary at this point.

Also, since I lost about 2" of cable, I had to turn the adjuster under the truck out almost all the way. Even after doing that, I can only pull the handle about 4 clicks until the brake engages adequately.

I didn't have a camera with me when I did this, so I made some drawings illustrating the fix. I can take photos if anyone would like to see some, but I'll have to do a little disassembly to get to it of course.

Here's a picture of what the tapped end of the "rod" looks like, with the smaller hole next to it (note also that the original hole and slot for the stock cable are still usable if I ever get a stock replacement cable):


Here's more or less what it looked like with the bolt clamping the cable into the bottom of the hole (although in my truck the bolt head is broken off):

Here's a line drawing showing a cross section of the interior of the end of the rod:


Anyway, I was pretty excited that it actually worked, so I had to see if anyone else might want to try it. Also, I didn't use a drill press or anything... the whole process was very low-precision, so it oughta be pretty easy for anyone with the correct tap and bits to do.

Andy