23/09/09 - MOT at last!

For those of you following this site you may have seen that my Jimny failed its MOT last week (SEE HERE).

Therefore this current week has been a long saga of getting it fixed. It only failed on the nearside rear brakes being ineffective, both on the foot brake and the handbrake. However it has been a difficult job to get any performance back out of the brakes.

The whole brake setup is in a poor state due to the mud and sand abuse it has been getting. The drums are scored, shoes are low and the handbrake cables are stretched.

I therefore replaced the shoes (for those of you collect part numbers they were "SolidAce BSS9024 - which actual Google as Honda Civic Brake Shoes) and also emery clothed the inside of the drums. This didn't work however and I failed the MOT again.

Second time around I replaced the Handbrake cables. This is a surprisingly straight forward job, despite it looking difficult when looked at from underneath the car. The best bet is to undo the mounting plate at the lever end of the cables (the one under the car where the two cables become one). With this plate loose the cables can be flexed and bent around to disconnect them. (Sorry - no pictures on this - my camera is off for repairs!)

So with everything cleaned or replaced I spent a good hour adjusting it all up to within an inch of its life. I went off to the MOT centre this morning and it scraped through. Needless to say I have had enough of these brakes so watch this space for the "Disk Conversion" project coming up.

Just a note: The handbrake cables are different on either side of the car and loop over each other underneath the car so take care on which cable is fitted to which side. The cables I got are:

Offside Handbrake Cable - ADK84642

Nearside Handbrake Cable - ADK 84645