Possible Mazda5 rear brake issue?

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2012 Mazda5 Sport 6MT
At the beginning of the year I replaced my rear brake pads. It was a fairly easy job once I figured out the tool necessary to push in the parking brake piston. The brakes work and feel fine but I think I discovered a problem last week. I was replacing the rear shocks and noticed that one of the wheels, the left I think, was still spinning even though the parking brake was engaged. I’m assuming that the parking brake should work on both rear wheels, correct? Did I do something wrong when swapping pads?

A couple of years ago I did manually adjust the parking brake at the handle. After replacing the pads I was surprised that the handle had the same amount of play; I assumed that it would be tighter since the pistons are further out now. I’m assuming that I screwed something up, but I need to know what I should look for in order to get the parking brake working on both wheels and to get a tighter feel on the handle. Any ideas?
 
At the beginning of the year I replaced my rear brake pads. It was a fairly easy job once I figured out the tool necessary to push in the parking brake piston. The brakes work and feel fine but I think I discovered a problem last week. I was replacing the rear shocks and noticed that one of the wheels, the left I think, was still spinning even though the parking brake was engaged. I’m assuming that the parking brake should work on both rear wheels, correct? Did I do something wrong when swapping pads?

A couple of years ago I did manually adjust the parking brake at the handle. After replacing the pads I was surprised that the handle had the same amount of play; I assumed that it would be tighter since the pistons are further out now. I’m assuming that I screwed something up, but I need to know what I should look for in order to get the parking brake working on both wheels and to get a tighter feel on the handle. Any ideas?
Yeah, the parking brake locks both rear wheels. It's hard to imagine changing brake pads affecting the parking brake, but it could be something with the piston — perhaps it's seized? Did you have any trouble compressing it to fit the brake pads in?

My first thought is to make sure the parking brake cable is connected at the calliper on that side.

Second thought is to make sure the brakes are working on that wheel altogether. Jack up the rear, have someone press the brake pedal and see if you can spin the wheel.

My gut feeling is it's the calliper — how many miles/kms on the rear callipers? I recently had to replace both rear callipers as they were seized — 220,000km at the time.
 
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My only problem with compressing the pistons was just getting used to the tools - there were different ones in the kit for RH and LH threads and it took me a bit to figure out how and which one to use.

I'll see if I can get someone to help me test the brakes, although I can probably just jack up the car and hit the brake pedal myself after spinning the wheel in question.

The calipers looked and seemed perfectly normal when I did the brake job. I checked the motion of the moving parts when swapping pads and everything appeared normal, but maybe I have to revisit that.

The car is nearly 10 years old, built in November 2011, but I purchased it in October 2012 (the dealer's loss-leader) with 129 miles on it. I've only driven it just a little 70,000 miles (113,000 km) in that time. I drove 15,000 miles/year for the first three years but then found a job that was just 2 miles from home. In 2019 I had cancer and didn't go many places, followed by a layoff in 2020, so I haven't been driving as much as I did in years past.
 
At the beginning of the year I replaced my rear brake pads. It was a fairly easy job once I figured out the tool necessary to push in the parking brake piston. The brakes work and feel fine but I think I discovered a problem last week. I was replacing the rear shocks and noticed that one of the wheels, the left I think, was still spinning even though the parking brake was engaged. I’m assuming that the parking brake should work on both rear wheels, correct? Did I do something wrong when swapping pads?

If you have rear end up and spin the wheel, does pressing on the brake pedal stop it -basically does the rear bakes work?

Parking brake is a mechanism linkage. I suspect the ‘silver’ spring in this pic was reinstalled incorrectly.
 

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Try to manually engage the parking brake cable at the rear wheel. That little part that looks like a gate latch? That’s the one. Spin your wheel, pull on that. If the wheel keeps spinning? The caliper is at fault. If it it stops? The cable itself may have stretched or snapped somewhere.
 
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