Cowboy Mechanics

[Turbo]

My niece was home for a few days over new year & she asked me to look at the hand brake on her car as it wasn't working.

Got it jacked up & it was barely gripping one wheel & not gripping the other. The adjusters in the drum on the worst wheel were up so tight you could feel the shoes dragging.

I managed to dig my way to the cables at the handbrake & this is what I found.

No it's not an illusion, 1 cable is nearly an inch longer than the other! With the handbrake down the cables were that loose I could unhook them easily!

Thinking that the RH cable was broken I removed the drums & found this.

The RH brake shoe worn to the rivets & the drum badly scored, the LH one was ok & the cables were not broken.

What I'm guessing happened is someone either replaced 1 cable or bought a longer one by mistake, bodged it on & tightened the drum adjuster to try to take up some slack. The RH shoes were continually rubbing on the drum & wore down, damaging the drum in the process!

She has a garage that does her servicing. They have never fixed the brakes but did advise her that the back ones would need balancing for the next MOT.

So now instead of a pair of handbrake cables at £30 she needs cables, shoes & drums @ well over £100 plus fitting.

I offered to fit the stuff but there wasn't enough time before she went back to England. I did tighten the handbrake up enough so that it held on 1 wheel, the rh wheel still doesn't grip. She is leaving it in in a few weeks to get it serviced & repaired.

 

[frank horton]

my daughters car (2000 Fiesta 1.4) went in for a major service in August.....a country wide garage chain.......
they mentioned that she needs a new Cat and shocks all round......hmmmmmmm.
(January just passed the MOT without extra work after the brakes and bearings done).........
anyway..
on her way back from Birmingam in Dec the rear wheel bearing colapsed.....
The Roadside assistance said the brakes were shot as well and so full of dust with weeping wheelcylinder that he knows the drums had never been off......
So much for over a £300 maj/service......
the answer......
get to know a decent garage, only recomended from friends.....

I'd happily do it for her even for free but she lives nearly a 1000miles away....so stuffed......
be careful out there.....

 

[merryman]

Manual adjusters, and shoes with riveted linings? Not seen a car with those for almost 20 years. I suspect the cable problem has more to do with the drum and shoes being shot than t'other way round. Incidentally why were makers allowed to start bonding linings on? From a safety aspect it is a bad idea. I've had three cars in a row that "lost" bonded linings, resulting in a pedal to the metal experience.

 

[Alan Reynolds]

Well, they don't rivet disc brake pads on to the backing and they seem to stay put.

 

[merryman]

On my current car, a Fiesta, it was a pad that came off.

 

[armalites]

I am amazed how common this kind of thing is. I fully understand the "get the job done" attitude but charging good money for shoddy work is taking the mick.

I was asked to have a look a 2007 Mini Cooper S as a favour for a friend of a friend. She had owned the car 3 months and it started running rough and noisy. Took it a local place that specialises in them and they told her it was fit for scrap and charged her £200 for "diagnostics". They initially told them it was likley oil geting the spark plug hole and causing a misfire and said they had changed the plugs and oil.

They would have know within a few seconds of starting it that it had the very common timing chain guide break up on those engines. Stripped it out, pulled the sump found bits of the guide everywhere. Fitted new chain/guide kit. The spark plugs had clearly not been changed in 50K and the oil was like treacle. Car ran like a dream after all for £250 of bits.

I spoke to the garage in question and they had very cleverly put "Diagnostics" on the invoice so everything else was verbal. It saddens that a garage with a good reputation can get away with that kind of thing.

 

[Turbo]

Manual adjusters, and shoes with riveted linings? Not seen a car with those for almost 20 years. I suspect the cable problem has more to do with the drum and shoes being shot than t'other way round. Incidentally why were makers allowed to start bonding linings on? From a safety aspect it is a bad idea. I've had three cars in a row that "lost" bonded linings, resulting in a pedal to the metal experience.

It's a 2010 Skoda Fabia 3 so not an old car. It has an auto adjuster for the brake shoes but it doesn't work properly, they never do. These have a wedge type of adjuster instead of the more common toothed wheel and it is a pig to adjust using a screwdriver through a stud hole.

 

[octo0072000]

are you sure that the handbrake compensator should be bent like that if that should be straight then the cables would be correct.
used to be a similar problem on rover 75 people make an uprated compensator
piece for it if the right hand brake was adjusted correctly the cable would be shorter looks like some monkey has wound up the adjuster at the handbrake lever in the past rather than adjust the shoes cables should be loose first then adjust the shoes then readjust at the hand brake end

 

[aguycalledsteve]

It's a 2010 Skoda Fabia 3 so not an old car. It has an auto adjuster for the brake shoes but it doesn't work properly, they never do. These have a wedge type of adjuster instead of the more common toothed wheel and it is a pig to adjust using a screwdriver through a stud hole.

E46 BMW's are the same. Adjust through the stud hole. PITA to do, I much prefer my landy's adjuster of a nut on the back of the shoe housing you do manually with a socket. Much easier.

 

[cianh91]

Local mechanic(at least he claims to be) done the brakes in one the girls I knows car and the pads came apart so brought it back to him to get new pads in .
Car was worse after so she asked me to have a look . Stripped out the pads and he had tiger sealed the pad back together . Then got told by another local fella how he brought the same guy a bike for a new clutch years ago and got bike back rode it home and couldn’t get 4th brought it back and he’d removed 4th for no reason other than he said sure what do ya need 4th for .

 

[keithski122]

I had to have my cars exhaust changed recently, the mechanic even had the audacity to charge me £20 for doing it!

 

[bigegg]

I had to have my cars exhaust changed recently, the mechanic even had the audacity to charge me £20 for doing it!

ah. but did he change it? or just patch the hole with some bog roll and bluetack?

 

[dannyp]

Auto adjusters on drums. They do that. Vag drums are utter twerps for it. The adjusters can get over adjusty or just don’t adjust depending what they feel like.

 

[bigegg]

Auto adjusters on drums. They do that. Vag drums are utter twerps for it. The adjusters can get over adjusty or just don’t adjust depending what they feel like.

seem to remember that my next door neighbour's Renault had an electric hand brake with auto adjust.
always adjusted to permanent just be "on".
noise. rubbish mpg, and replace pads every 6 months.

I told him to burn it - but he scrapped it instead.
at least he listened when I told him to buy a lexus.
which has the "screwdriver through the students hole " type handbrake adjuster.

 

[Turbo]

Just an update on this - my niece went in to get new tyres fitted & she asked them to take a quick look at the handbrake. They told her that it was ok - when it left me it was only gripping on one side!

And no it wasn't kwik-fit, it was an independent tyre place!

 

[Tinbasherdan]

Took my old defender to a different garage than usual for MOT once due to my usual spot undergoing some building work. Went to pick it back up to be told he hadn’t tested it as it had a slight diesel leak. He was right, it did. It also had a nice perfectly clean nick in one of the plastic lines by the filter. Needless to say it didn’t go back

 

[Kayos]

Took my old defender to a different garage than usual for MOT once due to my usual spot undergoing some building work. Went to pick it back up to be told he hadn’t tested it as it had a slight diesel leak. He was right, it did. It also had a nice perfectly clean nick in one of the plastic lines by the filter. Needless to say it didn’t go back

That’s shocking really.
I take mine to the Landy specialist, they take it to be tested but they have a good relationship with the garage and if it fails on anything Land Rover specific it’s in the right place to fix it