Failed MOT on parking brake

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Frankie

Active Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2010
Messages
390
Location
Guildford,Surrey
Car
E230 Elegance Ford Ka Honda Z50x3 ATC70
My car failed it's MOT today as the offside parking brake was ineffective,12% efficiency.
I tried giving PCS a ring but got the answer machine,sorry Olly,I hate those things.Guess you've closed for a few days.
So I'm wondering,does anyone know if there is anything in particular I could check in the meantime?
 
Hello

I knew mine was sting up as didn't always fly off so asked my local Indy to look at it before the mot.

On my s211 it's a bracket you can get to under the rear seats the y splits off to both brakes? I never saw it but guess they do it in the ramps. Greased and it works fine again.

Not sure if that helps?
 
That might help,I'll get it up tomorrow and have a look. This is on a W210 so a little older,so I imagine in more need of a little grease.Hopefully an easy fix.

Thanks
 
Adjustment of the parking brake shoes is very simple and is done individually on each wheel by means of the toothed adjuster accessible by removing one wheel bolt .

Here is the section from a well known workshop manual , although the same information is also included in the owners' handbook . The below is from a W124 manual , but every Mercedes for the previous 40 years or so has used exactly the same arrangement .

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Also, that yoke/ bell-crank can run out of travel under the seat. If the cables have stretched, there is pretty much no mechanical advantage to be had once the crank nears the approach angle of the cables. No matter how sweet the shoes, all mechanical advantage is gone. Check you don't need to take some slack out there, to get you to the 6-7 clicks before brake engaement
 
All done now,thanks for the help. I only needed to adjust the one wheel, didn't need to touch the cables. Had a bit of trouble locating the bit I needed to turn but it's so simple once you find it.
 

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