TD4 Brakes issue.....and fuel leak!!!

Hi all. I have a couple of things I need advice on....

First, I recently had the issue with sticking handbrake so today I have replaced the shoes and freed everything up and given the moving parts a good coat of copper anti sieze. The good news was that when I got the drums on and the handbrake adjusted up it all worked a treat. The problem is that now the brake pedal is spongy (tried bleeding them) and if I keep weight on the pedal, it slowly pushes down, does anyone have any idea why this suddenly happened as before doing the rear's it was a good solid pedal? The car still pulls up ok but if I leave the pedal alone, it needs pumping up.

Second issue is that I now have a fuel leak at the rear under the O/S wheelarch, it happened a year ago and was solved by replacing the corroded aluminium filter.......could this have happened again after such a short time? I can't see any leaks from the connectors......any help/advice greatly received as it is MOT time on Friday (4th March)

If you cannot get a firm pedal then it's either air in the system, a leak or a master cylinder fault. Perhaps you have disturbed the rear brake cylinder and it's now leaking,is there any sign of a fluid leak?
Worth checking also that your rear shoe auto adjusters have worked to get the shoe close to the Drum as a large clearance between shoe and drum will affect the pedal travel.
On the fuel leak, the td4 fuel filter and pump are located in the offside rear wheel arch, remove the arch liner and small cover plate to access. Then check all pipe joints etc.

Could the fuel leak be a brake fluid leak...?

Pedal going slowly to the floor would normally indicate a leak.

seals in master cyl

Have you adjusted the rear brakes manually through the adjuster holes in the back plate, if not then you will have excess travel on your rear shoes if you screwed in the adjusters when fitting the new shoes, the automatic adjusters will take a long time to take up this adjustment. If the pedal pumps up this can indicate incorrect adjustment especially if the pedal travel is lessened when the handbrake is on.

All Thanks for your advice and help - I manually adjusted the rear shoes today and it now seems to be better, I certainly have a better pedal! In terms of the fuel leak - it was the filter under the rear O/S wheelarch - what a daft design!!

I have not put the steel earth strap back on as so far as I can see there is no way that the filter could build up a charge as the pipes are all plastic and it is isolated from any other conductor. The electric pump is earthed through its own wiring. If any pne has different knowledge could you let me know??

03freelander said:

I have not put the steel earth strap back on as so far as I can see there is no way that the filter could build up a charge as the pipes are all plastic and it is isolated from any other conductor. The electric pump is earthed through its own wiring. If any pne has different knowledge could you let me know??

Click to expand...

That's exactly why it should have an earth strap - because it's isolated, i.e. it has no way of discharging the build up of static electricity and, in theory, eventually it could build up a charge large enough to cause a small spark between it and the shortest path to earth...

A new earth strap is very cheap from a dealer... at the very least you could strip the wire a little bit and slide it in the hole where the earth strap was so that the wire is touching the filter.

Chris - Thanks for that valuable info. I think I will get one of the chaps in our electrical workshop to make me an aluminium earth.....either way I will reinstall one. Cheers matey.