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Handbrake Issue - Drums removed - Videos included

MisterCruiser

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May 28, 2014
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ireland
I'm having trouble with my handbrake, I removed the drums to have a look at what's going on and my drivers side (slave side) seems to be overly tight regards the bell crank lever and the slave wire cable that runs across seems to be always tight / tensioned.

Even with the handbrake lever adjuster in the cabin slackened off and the adjusting cog in the drum itself slackened completely off it doesn't seem to make much difference to the resistance at the drivers side bell crank lever when I try move the crank by hand.

I made 2 videos, 1 of the drivers side and 1 of the passenger side, you can see how the passenger side has all slackened up freely but the drivers side hasn't, you will also see in the videos the difference in the stopper bolt that's supposed to rest against the backing plate, you can see I have a much longer bolt on my drivers side which I had to put in couple years ago when removing the slack to adjust the handbrake to get it to pass my Mot / Doe annual test.

Does my drivers side crank lever seem to be sticking at a certain point or seem to not have as much range of movement as the passenger side do ye reckon when I move it by hand in the vid?

Drivers side
Firefox Send - [Leaving Land Cruiser Club]


Passenger side
Firefox Send - [Leaving Land Cruiser Club]
 
I had another look at this and it's almost as if the slave wire coming across from the passenger side to the drivers side is too short, I disconnected the slave cable at the drives bell crank lever and the lever shot towards the drum back plate, the crank was under tension and being pulled away from the back plate even with the handbrake cabin lever slackened off and the drum cog wound fully slack.

I've had this problem since owning the cruiser 6 years and am now wondering if there's different slave cables and if a previous owner fitted a wrong / different cable at some stage.

See pics of crank being pulled away: ( my drivers side stopper bolt is removed in the pics)

Driver side

Drivers-Side.jpg


Drivers-side1.jpg



Passenger side

Passenger-side-slackened.jpg


Passenger-Side-slackened2.jpg
 
Can anyone tell me with regard to the picture in this post, should the slave cable be this far away from the crank lever it attaches to? Is the slave cable always under tension when connected up to the brakes, or should it be slack when the handbrake lever in the cabin is down?

In order to re-attach the slave cable to the drivers side brake lever I've to pull the crank lever away from the back plate and this puts a lot of pre-tension on the crank and is operating the shoes straight away, it's as if the slave cable is too short. It would be great if someone could confirm if different cables were used or if the slave cable should be slack with handbrake off.

IMG-3631.jpg
 
Memory is vague but i reckon most of what your thinking crossed my mind when i renewed the handbrake on both my 90's . cleaned them up wound them in wound them out scratched my head and did it all again without ever finding an answer . But with new disks , dogbones , shoes , springs and clips both handbrakes have been great for years .
 
Did you renew the actual handbrake cables?

If you think of it the next time you get out of your cruiser maybe you'd just check if the slave cable has much tension on it at bell crank lever at the drivers side drum with the handbrake in the cabin off.
 
I will take some pics tomorrow for you . I didn't change any cable , as i said i couldn't make heads nor tails of that side of things so i think i just put it back as i found it before i begun .
 
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I can’t see your vids by the way but on both my trucks the drivers side cable stop barely moves at all handbrake on or off . And the slack in cable with handbrake off is governed by the passenger side stop bolt . Right or wrong I don’t know but it’s never been an issue on my trucks both of which have good handbrakes being all new internally a few years back .

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7AAB648D-62DE-40EB-B5F9-E3C078176964.jpeg
 

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That’s a pic of handbrake on and handbrake off , while off the cable has maybe half inch of slack if I press on it , maybe less . Hope that helps in some way ?
 
That’s a pic of handbrake on and handbrake off , while off the cable has maybe half inch of slack if I press on it , maybe less . Hope that helps in some way ?

Thanks for the pics and checking the tension, that helps a bit. Cheers.

If I try to attach my slave cable, there will be no slack in it even with the handbrake off. I notice from you pics your springs linking the crank lever to the drum backplate are under tension suggesting mine is normal then to have to push the crank away from the drum which will put them springs under tension. I whought they should be slack with the handbrake off.

I don't understand how the slack in the drivers side slave cable is governed by the stopper bolt on the passenger side drum?
 
The driver side adjustable stop bolt does bugger all that i could work out and that's what confused me , why is it there at all ? but the same bolt on the passenger side touches the backing plate when the handbrake is off .

If you think the handbrake is working better on one side than the other then the adjustment is inside the drum , take the wheel off find the hole and

1586200714116.png
 
It was hard to make out in your pic with the angle, but is your driver side stopper bolt not touching the drum back plate when the handbrake is off?
 
Nope not on either truck and i gave up trying to work out why when i accepted it makes no difference to handbrake performance which is good on both .
 
Nope not on either truck and i gave up trying to work out why when i accepted it makes no difference to handbrake performance which is good on both .

That's mad, I didn't realise that. Mine is the exact same as in it doesn't touch the back plate, although it's a lot further away from the drum than yours looks like. I thought it was supposed to touch the back plate, that's why I thought my drivers side was faulty.

I left my drivers cable un-attached earlier today, I just adjusted the cog up to when the hub became tight then backed it off 2 clicks approx and left the cable un-attached. But I then decided to reattach it this evening and I found it was physically impossible to re-attach the cable in this position, I had to wind the cog completely off and even then it was still pressure to get the cable attached. I then just adjusted the cog again as normal.

I've adjusted them before and they never seem to last too long for me, handbrake lever in the cabin always ends up needing to be pulled to the roof.
But that's amazing that I didn't know the drivers stopper doesn't reach the back plate. If your 2 cruisers and my cruisuer are doing it then they must all be like that by design! I agree with you then, what is the point of that stopper bolt?
Cheers for input! :))

Do you use the passenger side stopper bolt just to take up obvious slack in the crank lever when you have the cog set where you want. That's what I used it for but wasn't sure if I was taking up too much slack with it.
 
You know that the 90 handbrake and 80 handbrake are the same...?

 
I think i just set the bolt to touch the plate where it falls naturally anyway even if the bolt was removed , as i say it was a long time ago and i never did make sense of it .
 
I've had several 80's and 90's. I wrote the guide on setting up the handbrake. Both sides when correctly adjusted should have the bolt touching the back plate. That's what it's there for. You need to give the whole mech a really good service and lubriaction so that all components move freely and then set it up per the guide. The stopper bolt as you call it is there to remove the slack from the drum mechanism so that any movement in the lever and cable operate the brake shoes and not take up slack. The driver's side is slaved from the passenger side in effect and always lags slightly behind due to the absence or a proper compensator. It's necessary to adjust the driver's side slightly differently to the passenger side (but only a little) to account for this design flaw. But before doing any of this, the relay arm over on the passenger side of the axle needs to be free, the inner wire, in the drum needs to be free, the bellcranks in the pivot housings need to be free and all the springs must be in their correct positions. If any of these components isn't in good shape, you'll never get it to work correctly. It's all in the guide.
 
Everything in my brake drum is free and moving, I fitted new genuine Toyota brake shoes in 2016 and renewed some of the springs and bits then too. I can see everything is still attached and moving including the compensater swivel pivot thing closest to the passenger side of the axle where the main handbrake cable goes through it and where the slave cable terminates at. This swivel point is free moving. The drum inner cables are moving free, the crevice pin holding the cables to the end of the bell crank levers are free and not worn, the pin under the rubber gaiter attaching the crank to the alloy piece seem in good condition too and moving freely, I greased these all up before. Its a little tricky to slide the rubber gaiter off to see the full picture though. My adjuster cogs bottle piece are free moving too, I removed them and put new grease in them. They are actually in fairly good condition overall, if anything is worn its the retaining pin holes in the back plate for the pins that hold the shoes against the drum backplate.

So in theory, I should be able to set them up better, I'll try your guide again, this time taking the slack out of the crank when I see the shoes begin to move. :)
Cheers for the tips.
 
Excellent. That's the right place to start. Remember tha you work from the shoes backwards. Take all the slack out of the shoes, hold that on the adjuster / stopper bolt, then back the shoes off until the drum is free. But start with the shoes jammed hard against the drum using the adjuster cog.
 
Swinging-Compensator.jpg



In the above pic, I didn't realise the whole arm was supposed to be able to swivel, I thought just the red circled bit needed to swivel,,, the blle circled pivot point was seized, I had grabbed it at 1 stage to see if it moved and it didn't so I thought it wasn't meant to. No wonder I couldn't get the slave cable to reattach, that's amazing, I've owned this cruiser 6 years and have always had trouble adjusting the handbrake every year come test time and I never knew that arm had to move. I never seen it pictured in a guide or thread and any reference to it I took as being the end part I circled in red. Oopps,,, oh well, ya learn something new everyday, ha!

I freed it up today, it was thanks to Bob Murphy for pointing it out to me in my picture that it looked seized and that the whole arm was meant to move.

Sure what better way to spend some lockdown time than rooting with the cruisers handbrake. Cheers for all the replies :)
 
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