At 10:10 PM 11/26/98 -0500, Mike Lishego wrote:
>....
> About half way through my trip, I noticed that my brake pedal travel
was much higher than I was used to. .... everything in my braking system is
less than two years old .... brake fluid was still at the same level it was
when I left - at the full mark.
> I .... found that my e-brake cable had come loose from the driver's
side of the car. .... after a long twisty road,.... felt each wheel hub.
The hubs were all cool, .... But, how would they "un-adjust" so quickly? ....
I will take an educated guess.
At some point in the past life of this car, at a time when the rear brake
shoes were partly worn, the DPO affected a brake adjustment by shortening
the hand brake cable rather than by using the normal brake adjuster screws
at the rear wheels. The hand brake cable would then be holding the shoes
in a partially activated position and not allowing them to return all the
way back to the rest stops.
Now while you're driving one of the cable attachment points breaks,
relieving the preload and the quasi-adjustment in the cables, and allowing
the brake shoes to return to the proper rest stops. This immediately gives
the shoes more travel from the rest position to the point of contact with
the drums, resulting in more pedal travel required to actuate the brakes.
The solution to the long pedal travel is a normal adjustment of the rear
brakes. Do this before you reattach the cable. However, beware that when
you do reattach the hand brake cable it may be too short, and you may end
up with unwanted tension in the cable when the hand lever is down. You
would want to slacken off the length adjustment in the cable until you get
just a little bit of slack at rest to assure that the brakes do not drag
when the hand brake is off.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
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