Hand Brake Adjustment

Just thought I'd share the procedure I used to tighten up my hand brake.
After about 6 months use I found I had to pull the hand brake lever up too far to my liking
to hold the car at a light or on a hill when parked.
There is a procedure in the WSM but it does not tell you what size socket to use.
The answer is you need a 10MM deep socket & short extension.
I tightened mine to where it takes about 6 clicks upward before it starts to take hold.
See the attached pictures to see where the wrench goes.

That's the easiest handbrake adjustment!

Last time I did one, I'm sure I had to pull off the plastic junk around the lever, and adjust the 2 nuts on the ends of the brake cables.

Thanks for sharing.

Your welcome.
I got side-tracked by a picture I found online showing a turn buckle cable adjuster under the car (must be for an older Micra).
I even rolled the rear tires up on ramps to look for the adjuster & found nothing but 2 shielded cables, one to each wheel.Attachment 4166

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jimwilly

Your welcome.
I got side-tracked by a picture I found online showing a turn buckle cable adjuster under the car (must be for an older Micra).
I even rolled the rear tires up on ramps to look for the adjuster & found nothing but 2 shielded cables, one to each wheel.Attachment 4166

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wow!!!! Thanks for the great tip. My car had rolled down the drive way yesterday. The brake was not engaging very tightly any more.
I saw this tip for adjusting the parking brake. So I went to Canadian Tire and spent $6.00 for the deep 10mm socket.
Stick it on the end of a speed handle (its nice and long) and in 1 minute the brake was adjusted.

Funny I just got an email update alert on this thread from "wayward_one" but don't see it here yet? Anyways he/she mentioned manually adjusting "silver" adjusters on the rear drum brakes.
I had a sudden memory of High School Automotive class where we learned about self-adjusting drum brakes.
The procedure I used was to back up (safely) & then apply firm brake pressure to come to a complete hard stop & then release the pedal.
I did this 2-3 times & was amazed how much better the brake pedal felt after, the brakes now grab with very little peddle travel & feel firmer + the E brake handle travel required is less.
The idea is the the drum/shoe self-adjusters will click/ ratchet tighter one time per hard reverse stop.
Probably doing this too
many times will result in no free play on the drum's shoes & cause dragging (not good)

Exactly what happened to mine, except I use the handbrake religiously and they still seized. Definitely check them if you're having issues we had to free them for everything to work. I went without back brakes for a few months not realizing they were seized from something.