Well after saying the day before " this has been perfectly reliable for the last 5000 miles " the kiss of death reared it head and the VW broke down 200 miles from home.
Firstly the ABS and Traction lights came on whilst on the motorway about 1 mile from where I was going to get off but everything seemed ok until I had to set off from the roundabout above the motorway. As I set off with RH lock applied it struggled to move with knocking and banging from the underneath so we limped to the first roundabout ( about 100 m) and parked it up.
Long story short we got recovered 14 hours to get home, no idea whats wrong but suspect mechanical.
Having a diagnostic bloke out to one of the trucks I asked him to plug it in to give me an idea where to look. within a minute he said " rear offside ABS sensor failure", this tells the control module to lock the rear diff making it protest mechanically when turning.
Said sensor purchased ( £28) and set to swapping it . Bolt out no problem sensor totally stuck in housing with rust and quickly snapped off . Looked at removing the drive hub to get at the underneath but that was massive work with a press etc so that was out.
To get to that stage I had to remove the disc, which was probably original which came straight off. What a mess inside, some bits of handbrake shoe lining fell out and a lot of rust. Anyway I sent a drill down the remains of the ABS sensor and with the help of maintenance spray and a long screw eventually got the bugger out. The new one wouldn't go in so essentially I had to ream the hole out until it fitted well and reconnected the plug.
While I was there I replaced the handbrake shoes, discs and pads and it went back together as one would expect. On the test drive all lights were out and it drives perfect
The offender.
The state of the handbrake surface.
And the shoes
New handbrake shoes installed
And discs and pads.
This goes to show what can be hidden within an old vehicle, the handbrake passed its test last time but I suspect it was only due to the excessive roughness of the surfaces. Needless to say I had to do the same journey again in Marias 120 the following Sunday and I thoroughly enjoyed the run out, especially as it was without incident.
Not LC I know but hey ho.