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Hand Brake Adjustment

To adjust the hand/parking/emergency brake:

1) With rear axle on jack-stands and brake off, remove wheels and replace at least 3 wheel nuts equally spaced (with spacers if necessary) to hold drum/rotor assemblies in their working position.

2) Check to see that the stop screws at the ends of the cables at the wheels are in contact with the brake backing plate. If they are not, de-adjust the brake lever inside the cabin until they are. The locknuts at lever can be difficult to get at.

3) Rotate drum/rotor to allow access through hole in face of drum to adjusting wheel of shoes. Adjust shoes until they are obviously binding. While adjusting, occasionally work the brake by stretching cable by hand to ensure shoes remain central to drum.

Note: Binding can be difficult to feel with LSD, viscous drive and/or auto. Experience counts a lot here. These three items cause resistance to turning drum/rotor and reduce your chance of feeling shoes starting to bind. If you want to be anal, remove the rear axles to alleviate this problem.

4) After binding is felt, back adjuster off 3-4 clicks. If you don't trust yourself, make it 5-6.

Note: The factory manual recommends backing off 8 clicks. The factory method works, but if you follow it, you may find that the in cabin lever adjustment (see point 6) will pull the stop screws away from the backing plate. The danger with this is that should the cables become at all sticky, and not return to centre, one brake may be kept slightly on. CRITICAL in adjustment is the starting point i.e. stop screws on backing plate (point 2).

5) Rotate drum/rotor to ascertain that shoes have clearance.

6) When totally sure that all is in order with cables and drums, adjust lever inside to come tight at 7 clicks.

7) Work brake a few times and recheck that shoes still have clearance. Tighten lock nuts at in cabin lever. Oh, and don't forget to put the wheels back on.

8) Have one or three #6.

Special note!: A mal-adjusted hand/parking/emergency brake will act in one of two ways. Too loose and it will not be efficient (able to live with that). Too tight and it will build up heat and bind at the most inconvenient place and time (not so easy to live with).