Technical dodgy rear brakes

[adiohead]

Hi people

My doblo failed it's very first MOT because the rear brake efficiency was too low.

I took it to Fiat and they gave them a clean (charged me £120) and it JUST scraped through on the second test.

I've just got it MOT'd again and the rear brakes are still dodgy but it's just passing.

I want to get it sorted but all fiat want to do is clean them and charge me stupid money.


Anyone know what could be causing the problem and how I could solve it?

 

[Ulpian]

Ouch!
Mine's nearly five years old and the brakes seem fine. This is worrying. Do you drive 'hard', by which I mean sometimes give the brakes a good workout, as I sometimes need to do, when slowing down for slip roads or checking for gormless puller-outers for example?

I had to have the front pads and disks changed last year too, which wasn't cheap, even at a non-Fiat specialist. Some people tell me I am a hard driver; I don't know...

My car has only done about 46,000 miles by the way.

 

[RichDoblo120]

Gave them a clean?
Did the shoes still have plenty of wear left in them? If so, why did they need cleaning? Leaking cylinders maybe?

 

[sludgeguts]

I'd have it back to fiat. Show them the fail cert & the 'just pass' cert & tell them you're not happy with the work they did.
You took it in with dodgy rear brakes, for the money you paid the brakes should now be spot on.
By handing the car back with barely acceptable rear brakes, they were failing in their duty of care.

BTW, was it rear brakes in general or handbrake?
Sometimes the handbrake mechanism inside the wheel can sieze/rust/stiffen, drastically reducing the efficiency of the shoes.
I had this with one car and I removed a pivot pin, cleaned the rust off & applied wd40. (your description of "gave them a clean" sounds similar?)
Following year, same problem. This time, when I removed the pin, I made the hole .5mm bigger. Problem never came back.

 

[Niall_G]

I suspect this is due to poor maintenance.

Mrs_G's Cargo has over 300,000 miles on it now - still on the original rear brake shoes!! I put this down to a thorough clean at each service by my local independant garage. The drums are removed, the whole mechanism cleaned and checked approx every 6 weeks. Sounds like your dealer waits for things to go wrong before 'maintaining' them.

 

[sludgeguts]

approx every 6 weeks. .

That's every 3 years for us mere mortals then (in terms of mileage)