I thought the first item of treasure that I would fit would be the handbrake.
Its a nice simple design, its easy to see exactly how it works.
A cable comes up on each side from the drums, ends in a threaded rod, that fixes to the handbrake leaver with an adjuster. Rotate the adjuster up or down the RH or LR threaded rod to adjust the brake on each side.
You can see it here:
Sounds simple, but its taken me absolutely ages to remove the adjusters and rods from the old handbrake and fit to the replacement one.
The problem was that the adjusters were basically seized onto the threaded rod, so turning them just resulted in the rod twisting too and then each handbrake cable gradually winding up like a spring.
There is not a lot of room to get another tool in to hold the rod, because the seat frames are in the way.
In the end I managed to wiggle some Mole Grips in and grab the rod, but this felt really brutal and was damaging the thread on the rod.
Nevertheless it worked and out came the old handbrake, just leaving this:
You can see here the old and replacement handbrakes and why I was pleased to find the replacement.
I wanted to try and avoid the Molegrip approach when reassembling, so managed to get 2 nuts onto each side and run down to the end of the threaded section. Hoping they would lock together and I could then hold the rod still while threading on the adjuster.
This is the bit that took ages and 3 attempts.
First I'd pulled the rod and cable out from the handbrake frame completely, that made it much easier to get the nuts on, but they then made the rod diameter too big to slide back into place, so off they had to come.
Attempt 2, I put a nut on each side, while the rod was in the frame- took a long time, turning them down, basically half a flat at a time (5/16th UNF for reference)
1 nut went on each side, but I really struggled to get the second threaded down, it was just too stiff.
So I tried reassembly, hoping one jammed nut would be enough to hold the rod from turning- no chance!
So third attempt (on another day) and I finally got 2 nuts locked against each other.
You can see here my spanner holding the nuts while I try and thread the adjuster on with a long socket.
Did this work?
Nope
even with 2 nuts locked, it was still too stiff to get the adjuster threaded down, the pair of nuts just spun together rather than the adjuster turning.
So off it all came again.
In the end I did have to go back to the Molegrips and this did eventually work.
The thread is well and truly chewed up as a result of this, so I think it will be new cables (which include the threaded section) if I have to do this again.
On the plus side, as well as the replacement handbrake being fitted, its also adjusted far better than it was originally and works nicely on the 3rd click of its travel- phew!
Cheers
Nigel
even with 2 nuts locked, it was still too stiff to get the adjuster threaded down, the pair of nuts just spun together rather than the adjuster turning.
