I found a way to 'shorten' an old emergency brake cable that may be of use
to others.
DISCLAIMER:
Provided that your drums are up to spec, your brake shoes new, your brake
adjusting screw is only one or two clicks 'up', your linkage is tight and
the pins checked and/or renewed and blah blah blah. In other words,
EVERYTHING else is great and the cable adjusters are set all the way to the
limits and the brake still doesn't engage till the lever is pointed to the
heavens. Then you might try the following if you are nuts enough to fool
with your brakes based on something you got on the web.
The cable housing nests into recesses drilled in the cable adjusting
ferrules. I found each hole to be about 1/2" deep. To 'shorten' the brake,
you need to lengthen the cable housing between the adjusting ferrules. I
took eight small split washers that when flattened and stacked would be
about 1/2" thick and split them open enough to slip over the cable. Putting
four on the cable at each end between the slightly pulled apart cable
housing and the ferrule, I re-flattened them and poked them into the 1/2"
deep hole of the ferrule. Obviously the correct size of split washer is
essential, hole bigger than cable, outside diameter less than size of hole
in ferrule. The hole in the ferrule is now only 1/4" deep but the cable
housing still nests back into it fine. You've 'shortened' the cable by 1/2".
In my case I found the brake now engaged on the third click, disengaged
fully, and gave me back a few turns on the adjusting ferrule for the future.
I was just going to shorten the cable and re-silver solder as a lister
suggested, but found I could not separate the cable from the clevis. It
seemed to be squeezed onto the cable rather than silver soldered or brazed.
I admit to gloating when I figured I could do it with eight split washers
with the cable still on the car. I'm cheap AND lazy. Too bad I figured
that out after I took it off the car.
Regards, Glen Byrns
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