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
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