Exhaust Leak

[Bozzy]

Cheers Steve. It failed first time on the headlight aim being too low, but the good man who has been doing my MOT's for 25 years adjusted them for me then passed it with 2 advisories, the exhaust and nearside parking brake being a little low on force.

I had the same with mine on the parking brake,same side as yours funny enough .
Sorted it when I did the Caliper paint though as I had to back off the brake shoe adjusters to remove the rear discs/drums,then reset them when they were put back on the car. It's a bit of a faff as you have to poke a screw driver through a wheel nut hole and push the adjuster cog round to set it and you have to back off the hand brake cables at the hand brake lever and adjust them also,I used the Bentley manual as a guide.

Steve

 

[FRANKIE]

I had the same with mine on the parking brake,same side as yours funny enough .
Sorted it when I did the Caliper paint though as I had to back off the brake shoe adjusters to remove the rear discs/drums,then reset them when they were put back on the car. It's a bit of a faff as you have to poke a screw driver through a wheel nut hole and push the adjuster cog round to set it and you have to back off the hand brake cables at the hand brake lever and adjust them also,I used the Bentley manual as a guide.

Steve

I'm a bit ashamed to tell you that I haven't really had to do this along with many other mechanical things to these cars as I just don't drive them and they're in the driveway just sitting there with the covers on them. ( Going to make a separate post on this now). What you explained about the brakes reminds me of working on a VW Beetle. There was a rubber plug in the rear cover plate that you removed so you could stick in a screwdriver to hit an adjuster star wheel to adjust the rear brake shoes. You did the same with the front as they had shoes also at that time. If you put off this adjustment, your brake pedal would get lower and lower until you were almost to the floor. If you REALLY procrastinated, you would have to double pump your brake pedal to stop. That's if you had enough time to do this. I was going around the circle on the White Horse Pike in Marlton, New Jersey once and had to come to a fast stop. I didn't have enough time to double pump the brakes and hit a Cadillac in front of me. The curved part of the hood (bonnet) hit his rear bumper and crushed the hood but, the other car being a Cadillac, you couldn't even SEE where I hit him. We stopped and he got out of the car and looked at his car and mine. He could see he had no damage but when he looked at my car, he had this look of pity on his face as I was just a young kid and he must have felt sorry for me. He didn't report it and just let me go for which I was VERY relieved. It was the best lesson I could have had on keeping the brakes properly adjusted.
Also, I used to have a VW Rabbit diesel. I had to replace the rear brakes on that but it had self adjusters. I always used to jack up the rear end of the car and take both wheels off but only work on one wheel at a time. I did this so that if I removed all the parts to the brakes and adjusters and emergency brake parts and then became confused with re-assembly, I could walk around the other side and look at the complete assembly that I hadn't touched to get my mind straight. This car had the most unusual set up for self adjusting I'd ever seen. I had to look at for about 15 or 20 minutes to figure out the way it functioned. Once I understood the way it functioned, it seemed easy. I had no problem with taking it apart and then re-assembly. It was critical to understand it FIRST. About 8 months later, I was in a parts store and the man in front of me was telling the guy at the parts counter that no one would ever want to do the rear brakes on a Rabbit because they were SO complicated. He just didn't take the time to figure out the function first. Frankie.

 

[t-tony]

They simply work on a wedge system, where a wedge is very lightly sprung downwards and as the shoes expand by brake pressure if there's room the wedge is gently pulled down to keep the shoes "on the drum"
This simple system is still used today on Seat, VW and Skoda's models with rear drum brakes.

Tony.