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WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET A GOOD HANDBRAKE ??

Jinxy

Jinxy

New member
In the last year ive replaced the parking brake shoes, cables, both shoe sliders in fact virtually everything to do with the parking brake, yet its still rubbish !!, I have to pull the handbrake lever up as far as I can to get it to hold !!, my drive is on a slight downhill, if I stop the car on the foot brake & pull the handbrake up as far as it goes & take my foot off the brake, the car rolls forward I then put my foot back on the brake & can then get another click, maybe two on the handbrake, then it'll just about hold, but the car still kind of creaks like its only just holding, its really driving me insane, are they all like this or is it just mine ? does anybody ever get a handbrake skid out of their 944 ????, help & advice please guys, cheers, Jinxy
 
Pull back the carpet around the hand brake lever and you will find an adjuster. Wind nut with spanner to shorten the cable. Job done.

ETA, it's easiest if you pull the handbrake on to pull the cable tight first then grip the cable with pliers or mole grips. You can then release the handbrake lever and the mole grips will hold the cable tension while you wind the adjust nut to take out the slack. The whole job is alot easier when the seat is out!
 
I take it you've adjusted the shoes on the hub. Ie adjust the shoes till wheel can not be rotated by hand and then turn adjuster back a bit. Then adjust the cable. try this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DpC0lXHP5o
 
All the adjustment suggestions are correct, the handbrake isn't very powerful and needs to be adjusted as well as you can manage, but another issue may be technique.
The drum hand brake is a single leading shoe design. This means that there is an element of self-servo effect here - one of the shoes, depending on whether the car is pointing up or down hill, will be dragged into more forceful contact with the drum by the rotation of the wheel. As you mention that you tend to apply the handbrake with the footbrake on, you are expecting the handbrake to hold the car from stationary, whereas its design actually needs the car to move a bit to fully engage the shoe against the drum. I've found that when I stop on a slope, if I release the footbrake just as I'm applying the handbrake so that the car kind of "rolls onto" the handbrake, it works fine.
Also, because my car doesn't get used daily, now and then I pull the handbrake up gently while driving slowly just to keep the drum surface clean...

Hope that helps!
 
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