Hi! I'm hoping someone out there can help me with a little handbrake problem I've got.
First of all, some background: the handbrake on my car, although not brilliant, has worked fine for quite some time. The handbrake lever would need to be lifted up quite a way, and sometimes you'd need to give it a bit of a tug if the car is on a hill, but it would always hold the car. Then, last weekend, I was driving to a friend's house. Shortly before reaching the house, I stopped at a red traffic light, on a hill. I used the handbrake, and when the light turned green, did a hill start. The brake was working fine at this point (I know, because I didn't roll backwards into the car behind me!) Around a minute later, I arrived at my friend's house. I pulled into his driveway, and went to apply the handbrake, only to find almost no resistance as I lifted the lever. A quick test, and I discovered the brake didn't work at all. Something had obviously broken between the traffic lights and my friend's house. There was a very definite difference that occurred within the space of a minute - it was definitely not a gradual deterioration. Today, I managed to leave work early enough to get under the car before it got dark. I was planning on investigating the problem, finding out what had broken, so that I could order some replacement parts tomorrow, and fit them this weekend. I was expecting to find a broken cable, or a snapped clevis fork, or something. But, when I looked, everything was in place, unbroken! I gave the cable a good pull at every point where it attaches to something else, just to make sure that nothing was broken, but it's firmly attached at the brake drums, the equaliser, and at the lever! However, it's very loose. When I say very loose - the spring on the front cable (just in front of the equaliser) was free to move backwards and forwards by about an inch with the lever in the "off" position. When I lifted the lever, all the cables tightened up, and the front cable moved sufficiently that the spring no longer had room to move around (but it certainly wasn't very compressed). However, there wasn't enough movement to begin to apply the brakes. It seemed as if the adjusting nut at the front of the cable (the one where it attaches to the lever) had come loose. I took the armrest off, expecting to find that the thread on the front of the cable had worn, and the nut had slipped. But I discovered that the lock-nut was still tight - too tight to be able to move by hand! So there's no way that this nut could possibly have come loose! The question is, what else, apart from the nut at the front of the cable, could cause this much slack to suddenly appear in the cable? I can't explain it. I should probably do some more investigating. The Haynes manual suggests that, with the rear brake adjusters set so that the wheels are locked, the relay lever should be at an angle of 15 degrees from the lateral. It got dark before I had a chance to play with the adjusters and check this. But if anyone could give me some ideas of where to look, based on my description of what I know so far, I'd appreciate it! Please copy any replies directly to me, as well as sending to the list, as I'm having trouble finding time to read the list digests at the moment. Thanks, Dean ------------------- /// [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list /// Send admin requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] /// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool /// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive /// Send list postings to [EMAIL PROTECTED] /// Edit your replies! If they include this trailer, they will NOT be sent.
