Morning. The mot is coming up and the handbrake has a lot of travel so I watched YouTube and thought it didn’t look that hard to do. I quickly realised why I hate mechanical stuff and can not understand why anybody would do it for pleasure. It says on YouTube to flick the little cog wheel towards the back of the near side and front for off sides. I have been out there flicking the cog and getting nowhere, it says the brakes should start binding, no all that has happen is the cog goes solid. Am I doing anything right or just give up. Cheers

There is normally very little wear on the hand brake shoes as they are a parking brake. Normally the problem is that the cable has stretched and the slack can be taken up using the adjuster under the plastic tray at the back of the centre console.

Thanks, I have tightened that up but the bracket thing where the nut tightens up sort of goes to one side. Not level. I just thought I could do it before the mot to save a fail etc. The idea is to get it through the mot next month then sorn it to save the tax.

Is this nut under the hand break gator ?

It was under that ashtray looking thing behind the handbrake

Yes, it’s underneath the tray that is effectively in the rear passenger compartment on top of the transmission tunnel behind the storage. The handbrake cable pulls on a bar that then pulls each wheels brake cable. There is an adjustment nut on the end of the single cable from the handbrake cable for slack to be taken up which alters how many clicks the handbrake makes. If adjusting causes the bar to pull lop sided (more on one side than the other) that suggests something wrong with one of the individual cables leading to each wheel. The handbrake isn’t operating when the wheels are turning (I’d hope) so there is little if any wear to adjust out at the brake drum. The actuator in each brake drum is prone to corrosion and seizes and the cables don’t always stay in their routing brackets.

Thanks, it always seems so easy when you guys talk about it or when watching on YouTube. I have put the wheels on and packed up as raining and basically admit defeat. I thought I could but couldn’t, 😩

Was just trying to make sure it didn’t fail and end up taxing it for November to get it fixed and retest.

If you adjust the mechanism at the brakes then it will stop one of two ways.

1. you adjust to make it shorter and it bottoms out

2. you adjust to make it longer and the brake shoe contacts the drum and you can't go any more


I suspect that you adjusted and got option 1 so you need to go the other way and get option 2.

Here are some links


https://www.freel2.com/forum/topic36728.html

https://www.freel2.com/forum/topic36792.html

Good luck

Paul

Thanks