Hi I have been away for a month or two and started up my Freelander today on my return (had a trickle charger), all ok but found both the rear wheels are locked. hand brake was off all the time. Any suggestions how to unlock them I don't want force it too much - feel it maybe a garage job.
Altbest.

Personaly i would jack up one corner at a time and see if it will rock free,if not wheel off and check pads,if not that i would look at the diff etc.

It will most likely be the handbrake shoes - even with the handbrake off they still run very close to the drum. If they won't free by rocking the car too and fro, I'd take the wheels off individually and 'belt' the drums with a reasonable knocking device to break the 'corrosion' inside!

Andy.

As Andy said, it will be corrosion, made worse by not applying the handbrake especially if the drums had water in them when the vehicle was laid up.

Wheels off and a good clean really, as if the wheels free themselves the performance of the handbrake may be poor if it works at all.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about cleaning the brakes and/or reduced braking performance - brakes tend to clean themselves up pretty well once they start turning.

Any disk brake can suffer this problem, not only ones with handbrake drums attached. I've experienced it many times on various cars (my old Isuzu used to do it all the time, and the Forester reasonably often), and I've had it a couple of times on the FL2 too. I must admit I've become fairly blase about giving it a bit of power to free the brakes off! With 'ordinary' disk brakes this shouldn't be a problem (they'll usually come free with a 'clunk' and a jerk) - they're designed for emergency stops from 100mph so they can take a fair bit of force - but if the problem is with the handbrake part one has to be more careful. I suspect, though, that the first thing the garage would try is a bit of power and see what happens! (Note that I'm not recommending such a course of action, and you do so at your own risk! But with something like this one can be over-cautious.)

thanks everyone for their views, took the plunge and did some progressive rocking, seems to have worked and freed things up. taking it for a gentle drive to the pub to make sure.
thanks