TD4 Poor handbrake

My handbrake managed 18% efficient at the MOT on Monday, the limit is 16%. I've had both drums off and the shoes are in good nick. I can't believe the complexity of rods and springs and levers involved to give such a poor performance. The tester must have nearly pulled the handbrake lever out of the floor to get a pass as the self adjusters had done just that. After the test the RH drum was binding. backed off the little ratchet wheel all is free again. Question is, is there any way to improve the performance of the handbrake? The design seems to only allow the brake to operate on one shoe and the other end of that shoe is up against a slave cylinder with no pressure in it. (unless you have your foot on the brake)

Theres a nut just behind the handbrake under the cover/orcubby depending which u have 2 screws front 2 screws at the rear if u need to remove it for acces then its a 10 or 12mm spanner /socket presuming there all the same mines an mk1..

Does sound like you need cable adjustment if brake pedal feels firm enough. Personally I dont like adjusting such things without doinf a bif of a clean up first just to be sure theres nothing sticking as the levers within the drum are quite bad for becoming stuck. General practise is to take up cable adjuster with the handbrake lever engaged one notch only. Adjust cable until shoes just start to make contact with drums. This is only effective if everything in drums is in good order and self adjusters have taken up correctly.

This is a regular probs with FL 1 handbrake, a good strip, clean, grease and reassemble should sort it out, use the adjusters on the shoes to get a slight drag then let off a couple of clicks then adjust the cables at the hand brake to 4-7 clicks.

My handbrake was cr@p until I had everything stripped down, cleaned and put back together. All fine now. Holds nicely on a hill.

Thanks Gents, looks like a good strip down and grease the links will pay dividends.

vortexring said:

...looks like a good strip down and grease the links will pay dividends.

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taking this out of context it would explain why "tratters" keep pigs in the back

Mine hand brake was the same, do whats already been said, but also when you've got the brake shoes etc stripped out, just make sure that hand brake cable isn't seize or stiff. My drivers side O/S hand brake cable was seize so I sprayed plenty of WD40 into the end of it, then kept working it and pulling on the inner cable with the mole grip until it came free. Once everything was cleaned etc, reassembled and adjusted the hand brake works perfectly on both rear wheels

Sucram said:

Mine hand brake was the same, do whats already been said, but also when you've got the brake shoes etc stripped out, just make sure that hand brake cable isn't seize or stiff. My drivers side O/S hand brake cable was seize so I sprayed plenty of WD40 into the end of it, then kept working it and pulling on the inner cable with the mole grip until it came free. Once everything was cleaned etc, reassembled and adjusted the hand brake works perfectly on both rear wheels

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Should of said check and lube cables, didn't need to do mine, as I put new cables on.

Having just bought my first FL 1 I too have found the handbrake to be poor, yet it passed it's MOT I am inclined to think how? and may take it back to the place I bought it and have the garage whom did the MOT to look at it again, then again if they could not get it right first time I doubt they will this time, therefore I may as well strip down and check it out my self cheers Arctic2

The handbrake on my 2002 TD4 was crap when I first had it. Like yourself, checked the shoes (Plenty of material left on them) and stripped the adjusters down and lubed them. Adjusted the shoes for a light rub with the handbrake at the first notch...no improvement
Decided to replace the shoes with Mintex and after a short "Bedding in" period the handbrake worked perfectly. I put it down to poor quality shoes being fitted previously.

my wife handbrake was absolutely rubbish and she had a load squeal on the right hand drum so I stripped it down found that the squeal was down to half of the shoe's pad was at the bottom .did that and the hand break was still bad had a quick look and the hand break cables were shot replace now it is perfect.

A correctly working handbrake should be pretty good. Mine shows 390 KGM on the rollers (VCU removed). This represents about 40% which is good.
If the VCU is present? The tester has to test the brakes on a road test, using a deceleration meter.

Mine works fine in reverse, park nose down hill she will roll away nose up holds a treat???

Mine was exactly the same (just sneaked through MOT on hand brake test), diagnosed as poor condition cables, new ones fitted and now perfect!

If you are stripping the rear brakes and have any suspicion that the cables might not be perfect then just fit new ones and be done with it. I rebuilt the rear brakes on my wife's 2006 TD4 a couple of months ago and the handbrake still wasn't 100% so I replaced the cables and they are perfect now.

I did some checking around first as there are reports of come cheap cables which don't contain the Teflon coating but settled on Pagid and they are excellent, at £17 each including P&P they aren't even expensive. Fitting was a breeze and when done I proved that one of the original cables was at fault.

Mine was also terrible until i replaced the cables.

Litch said:

If you are stripping the rear brakes and have any suspicion that the cables might not be perfect then just fit new ones and be done with it. I rebuilt the rear brakes on my wife's 2006 TD4 a couple of months ago and the handbrake still wasn't 100% so I replaced the cables and they are perfect now.

I did some checking around first as there are reports of come cheap cables which don't contain the Teflon coating but settled on Pagid and they are excellent, at £17 each including P&P they aren't even expensive. Fitting was a breeze and when done I proved that one of the original cables was at fault.

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Thanks for the heads up did you get Pagid cables from euro car parts if not do you have a link as to where you purchased please. Arctic2

Yes it was Eurocarparts.

I have a branch really close to where I work but it was no cheaper to go and pick them up so I just had them delivered.

Litch said:

Yes it was Eurocarparts.

I have a branch really close to where I work but it was no cheaper to go and pick them up so I just had them delivered.

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Once again thank you hopefully I will get round to this some times this week, cheers Arctic2