Handbrake:banghead:

First of all a little intro into what happened? Guy from work took it upon himself to move my Golf whilst I was out in the van which left me with a broken handbrake.

He denied even touching the handbrake even though it was on! And offered to pay for it even though he swore he didn?t break anything!!! Anyway I got the money and decided to fix it myself.

Used my Haynes manual to take apart the drum and replace the cable.  All in and hooked up. There is resistance there now.  Thing is the ratchet mechanism is not holding the lever up!! Does this mean the lever is broken aswell or maybe I am missing something?  Help!!!

Cheers
Jjl.

Funny enough the main pin that holds the handbrake in on my car fell out of one side yesterday! Right pain to knock it back in as the whole thing is under tension and I still need to address it properly as it's not right.

But I did manage to squash the actual handbrake at one point  which has the ratchet inside and that meant the thing wouldn't go down properly.

Your ratchet thing could be stuck inside, theres a little swingy peg thing that is released when you press in the button, sounds like it's depressed all the time, probably just needs a good fiddle.

My problem was because I live on such a slopey hill I have to have the car in gear to release the handbrake! Not ideal. Think I'll wait till I move and have my new flat driveway to get properly stuck in!!

Peter.

Seems to me lakesk8 that you have rediscovered the old mini autotesters trick of pegging back the handbrake ratshit (sorry - ratchet) so now you can perform your handbrake turns a lot easier and with much less embarrasment.

Anyways, it could be that you have the cables adjusted up too far so that the lever doesn't latch onto the ratchet quadrant at all since the brake is already fully on.  Try backing off the adjustment..you should hear approx 3 clicks of the ratchet as the brake starts to come on.

Cheers


PS: always do your reverse flicks right-hand down (RHD Golfs)