Hand Brake Cables and seat motor

[Big Frank]

Hi, can anyone help? Yes I have encountered the same problem as many other members - a handbrake that almost needs one to sit in the rear seat to apply sufficent force to hold the vehicle. I have checked with Xpart and they only have an offside cable at the joke price of £98 plus VAT and not a single n/s cable in stock. Any ideas. I also need a replacement motor to power the passenger seat fore & aft - again any comment would be helpful. Big Frank:confused:

[GeoffW]

have you tried a spacer behind the washer on the front cable, Ihave used some nuts and washers which improve things no end, before doing this make sure the rear adjustment is set correctly on the adjusters, don't forget to wrap tape around the spacer otherwise it may rattle when the handbrake is relaxed
I have a company that can make nnew cables cheaply if we order 50 sets but I am finding it imposssible to get a Lhd cable as a pattern, I have a RHD so were half way there :) what we need is to put pressure on X Part so get ringing you guys and let them know there is a demand for these cables, especially as our cars are getting older

[pessling]

would it make sense for us as a club to put some money towards getting the scrap one on ebay, have you tried pilson auto's for getting just the cable, i'm sure some of us including myself will put some money towards it to get the ball rolling

[ColinE]

would it make sense for us as a club to put some money towards getting the scrap one on ebay, have you tried pilson auto's for getting just the cable, i'm sure some of us including myself will put some money towards it to get the ball rolling


Problem is we need an unstretched sample to use as a reference sample

[pessling]

surely any sample is better than nothing for the time being, even if x part was to get them made what would they copy if they don't have anything to copy from

[Big Frank]

Thanks for the suggestions about handbrake cables - I had already heard about putting spacers in and thanks for explaining how this works so will try this as a last resort. I would be more than willing to chip in to buy some secondhand pattern cables for a manufacturer to look at - surely it's not rocket science to establish what the original length should have been? Clearly from reading the various replies this is a long running issue with 260's so surely there must be enough interest out there for us to band together and get some made - not too interested in pushing Xpart to get off their fat whats-its and then charge us a whopping £100 per cable! Anybody interested in getting the ball rolling - I'll kick off with £50 in the kitty! Big Frank.

[Willieo]

I had the MOT place argue my cables were stretched but after really taking some time to make sure the drums were clean of dust and the shoes were centralised and manually adjusted as close as possible to the drum surface without binding the handbrake is totally fine again.

Before adjusting the shoes you have to make sure the cable adjustment is slackened off so as not to be applying any tension to the shoes otherwise you cannot adjust the shoe clearance properly. People often make the mistake of taking all the slack out of the cable and then the auto adjusters on the shoes cannot work properly.

I don't believe in the stretching theory.

[ColinE]

I had the MOT place argue my cables were stretched but after really taking some time to make sure the drums were clean of dust and the shoes were centralised and manually adjusted as close as possible to the drum surface without binding the handbrake is totally fine again.

Before adjusting the shoes you have to make sure the cable adjustment is slackened off so as not to be applying any tension to the shoes otherwise you cannot adjust the shoe clearance properly. People often make the mistake of taking all the slack out of the cable and then the auto adjusters on the shoes cannot work properly.

I don't believe in the stretching theory.


When replacing handbrake shoes I set up handbrake as you suggest BUT as the front cable was stretched to hell I could not get the handbrake to work properly - I'm increasingly of a mind that it's the front cable that stretches but poor design of the overall set up causes additional problems that we'd all benefit from finding a fix to

[ColinE]

Hi, can anyone help? Yes I have encountered the same problem as many other members - a handbrake that almost needs one to sit in the rear seat to apply sufficent force to hold the vehicle. I have checked with Xpart and they only have an offside cable at the joke price of £98 plus VAT and not a single n/s cable in stock. Any ideas. I also need a replacement motor to power the passenger seat fore & aft - again any comment would be helpful. Big Frank:confused:

Try here http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/A-Shop-Of-New-Parts-For-MG-Rover_Rover-75-MG-ZT_W0QQ_fsubZ6822228QQ_sidZ147353747QQ_trksidZp463 4Q2ec0Q2em322

for seat motors - hope link works