I've always had many problems with my hand-brake, and its been a quest fixing it, but the good news is I finally have a fully functional hand-brake!
My car had two issues with the handbrake:
1. rusted, seized hand-brake cables. There is a TSB for updated cables that have a rubber boot on the end that prevents water from getting on/in the cable and rusting it out.
2. faulty caliper. My drivers side rear caliper's piston had stripped. See the rear calipers piston effectively sits on a threaded screw. It spins as it pushes out, and you have to spin it to get it to push back in when changing pads. Well mine was fubar'd. I could pull on the hand-brake lever on the back of the caliper, but it would never release the pads.
So in the end, I've got "new" remanufactured rear calipers that work GREAT, and with the TSB hand-brake cable I've got a hand-brake that works perfectly. I know "replaceing everything" isn't what you guys want to hear, and most likely its just hte cables for you, but thought my experience might help give you more input.
