Handbrake cable adjustment

74westy

Member
I know, I can hear you all thinking "not again!!". But I have read all the posts and nowhere can I find the exact method of tightening or slackening the handbrake cable.

Backing the car up a bit. I have rebuilt both rear calipers (girling) new seals, orings etc. Both have been bench tested and work correctly. After refitting I adjusted the handbrake mechanism by hand operating the quadrants and sliding the outer pad. All is ok up to this point, both quadrants are resting against their stops.

My problem is now the handbrake mechanism and cable. When connected the right side quadrant does not rest on its stop! From this I deduce that the cable is now somehow too short?

Right fast forward to the top of the page, how do I exactly slacken off the handbrake cable? Do I adjust at the clevis under the handbrake lever? Or do I adjust at the cable outer sheath near the extension housing, hopefully here. If here when I slacken the two lock nuts do I move the outer sheath towards the front of the car, or to the rear, and retighten the nuts.

The cable feels quite tight and the handbrake lever rests fully down.

Many thanks for the replies which will come flooding in.

Cheers,
Craig

Ps. 1972 P6B NZ assembled. Almond with buckskin interior.
 
74westy said:
Or do I adjust at the cable outer sheath near the extension housing, hopefully here. If here when I slacken the two lock nuts do I move the outer sheath towards the front of the car, or to the rear, and retighten the nuts.
Here, but I cannot remember which way tightens/loosens. It's obvious once you start fiddling :wink:
Harvey can now give you the proper answer :D
Jim
 
You undo the nuts and move them backwards, so the adjuster on the outer cable moves forwards, and you do that until both of the quadrants are back on their stops. Make sure all the linkage is free at the caliper end. You'll only get a good handbrake providing you've manually adjusted the calipers up far enough. Once it's all set up properly, at rest, the quadrants should be back on their stops, and the merest movement of the cable should see them move off them, and the quadrants shouldn't be moving very far at all before the handbrake is fully on.
 
How did you go? Timely thread as I'm about to lift the diff up into position, but I thought I should attach all the handbrake mechanism to the diff first.
 
OK. Crawled under The Rover yesterday to get things adjusted. Photos included for reference. The aim is to adjust the handbrake outer sheath forward in the fixing bracket. This makes sense now when I put some thought into it. To get more length from the cable you need to shorten the arch created in the cable between the two fixed points ie. the outer sheath fixing bracket and the bellcrank levers. All you need are two 9/16" spanners.

Here are pictures of my starting point, as a recap the right handbrake quadrant was not returning fully.
Right side before Left side before Handbrake cable
This is how much I needed to adjust the handbrake cable to get it to the correct length.

And this is the end results.
Right side after Left side after Handbrake cable after

Overall this was a fairly simple exercise. You just undo the nuts a little at a time , wiggle the cable to seat it and then check if the quandrants are returning back to the stops. The hardest part is getting the spanners on the handbrake cable nuts around the exhaust pipe!

Craig.
 

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74westy said:
The hardest part is getting the spanners on the handbrake cable nuts around the exhaust pipe!
I think having a cut down, shortened spanner or two is very helpful in certain situations :wink:
You've reminded me I want to get some of those crow's feet ratchet bits too..
Jim
 
74westy said:
The hardest part is getting the spanners on the handbrake cable nuts around the exhaust pipe!

corazon said:
I think having a cut down, shortened spanner or two is very helpful in certain situations

I can't be doing with any of that nonsense. I would probably remove the section of exhaust that was in the way. I learnt a long time ago that you spend more time trying to figure out a workaround than the time it would take to simply remove and refit the obstructing component.

Dave
 
Dave3066 said:
I would probably remove the section of exhaust that was in the way. I learnt a long time ago that you spend more time trying to figure out a workaround than the time it would take to simply remove and refit the obstructing component.

Even with the exhaust section removed, you still have to work around the propshaft.
 
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The two pics above show that you've fitted the front pad slippers upside down on both of them, so you've probably done the same thing with the ones on the back too.
 
Harvey, by 'pad slipper', do you mean this bit (circled?)
12904978795_a791a2df1a.jpg

And if so, should it be oriented as shown in orange?
If so, bugger! I might have done the same... Ramps out at the weekend methinks.
 
redrover said:
Thanks - there's no possible way I would have learned that otherwise! :)

ISTR it's in the WM.....Somewhere.....

They also "look" wrong when fitted incorrectly because the pads aren't in line, the inner pad sits too high. If you fit the slippers with the calipers off the car then chances are you'll fit them wrong, because the correct way isn't in line with the caliper body.

There's some excuse (I suppose) because of the above if you get them all the wrong way up, but I've seen "specialists" who have fitted them both ways on the same caliper. There's no excuse for that, it just shows that they don't have a clue.
 
harveyp6 said:
If you fit the slippers with the calipers off the car then chances are you'll fit them wrong, because the correct way isn't in line with the caliper body.

There's some excuse (I suppose) because of the above if you get them all the wrong way up, but I've seen "specialists" who have fitted them both ways on the same caliper. There's no excuse for that, it just shows that they don't have a clue.

I rebuilt mine on a bench and didn't have the pucker WM at the time. I'm almost 99% I put them on the wrong way simply because it looked wrong to have them out of line with the casting, and I didn't know exactly where the disc would run to, so it made sense not to have them proud of the casting. Ah well, be a good reason to inspect the pads - it's been 10k miles since they were fitted. Should be fine at that mileage, but MOT is soon so worth a snoop.
 
harveyp6 said:
Dave3066 said:
I would probably remove the section of exhaust that was in the way. I learnt a long time ago that you spend more time trying to figure out a workaround than the time it would take to simply remove and refit the obstructing component.

Even with the exhaust section removed, you still have to work around the propshaft.

Then remove that too :D :wink:

Dave
 
Double bugger on the "pad slippers'!!! I was hoping no one would say "you did that wrong" from looking at any details in the photos. But it's good to know, thanks Harvey. I did fit the pad slippers a couple of times different ways round and looked at the WM, and then decided this is how they should fit.

Well as redrover said "ramps out at the weekend"!

Craig
 
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