Technical New Panda owner

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Technical New Panda owner

Sorry but those are not the shoes!
Mine are the later ones with the 2 part ratchet system.
However I did loosen the handbrake right off, installed new shoes and refitted the rest. The adjusters seem fine on the pedal, but to get anywhere near a good hand brake I need to adjust cable so that binding starts. Maybe I'm expecting too much from the handbrake. It goes up to 5 or six clicks before becoming effective.
Thanks for all your help so far
RRR
 
Oh well, so much for my great "epistle"! maybe someone with an earlier car will benefit from reading it though?

Lets have a think about your system then. We had several of the really old Mk1 Pandas which had the system I described above with the purple one being the last of this model we owned. Then we bought the 2010 Panda Dynamic Eco (Becky) which we have today so I haven't owned or worked on one built between 1992 and 2010 (Felicity just seemed to go on for ever!) So does your setup have the ratcheting adjuster with one end resting on the brake shoe lever and the other end bearing against the front shoe? That's how the 2010 (and most cars which have this sort of adjuster) is set up. For the adjuster to work properly it's very important that the lever on the rear (trailing) shoe fully returns when the handbrake lever inside the car is fully released (ie, on the floor) otherwise the ratchet mechanism can't "catch" properly on the ratchet wheel.

So take both drums off and if you look at the levers on the shoes you'll notice there is a wee "pip" which, when the cables are completely slackened, comes to rest against the trailing shoe. Adjust the handbrake cables until this "wee pip" is just pulled away from the shoe on both sides. (literally a "fag paper" thickness is enough). You may find there is an inequality between the two due to friction and spring differences in the system so as long as the cables are tight enough but one lever is pulling away from it's stop and the other isn't then use a screwdriver or similar tool to force the lever which is moving back against it's stop. If doing this results in the lever on the other wheel to move off it's stop then don't worry about it. What you're trying to achieve is for the levers to be just a smidgeon off their stops thus ensuring there is no slack in the cables but without moving the levers from their stops to any measurable degree. That's your handbrake cables adjusted.

Now put the drums back on and pump the handbrake up and down to ensure the self adjusters have ratcheted right up. I like to pump the foot brake too which helps to centralize and "settle" the shoes (Of course, you have checked the adjusters are not seized? - try pulling the handbrake up, just once, with the drum off and see if the ratchet is rotating the toothed wheel if you're not sure).

At this point you've adjusted the cables so the self adjusters will work as intended and, by working the hand brake up and down you should have made the self adjusters take up the slack on the shoe to drum clearance. In theory that's all there is to it. - Don't keep the brake pedal pressed down when working the handbrake as this will defeat the ratchet - You say your lever is pulling up 5 to 6 clicks before you get a reasonable handbrake? Don't worry about it. If, like me, you are used to working on older cars (I grew up cutting my teeth on stuff like the Mini, Cortina, Anglia, Astin Cambridge, etc, etc.) The normal hand brake setting you were trying to achieve was usually 3 to 4 "clicks" on the ratchet. That's all out the door these days partially because of self adjusters where the most important thing is to ensure the system returns to it's stops when the lever in the car is fully off and partially because many manufacturers now use finer pitch ratchets. For instance our Panda pulls up 5 to 6 teeth when fully applied but my daughter in law's Honda Jazz typically achieves 7 clicks. It has quite a fine pitched ratchet and in fact our local Honda man tells me they don't worry until they get nearer the 10 clicks!

My older boy's Punto has a very similar setup and I adjust it in the same way and both it and the Panda have good handbrakes but neither pulls up in less than 5/6 clicks and I have no problems with the self adjusters failing to work. Of course the proof of the "pudding" is in the eating and luckily there is a side street near me which is very, and I mean very, steep (you can't get a run at it and the Panda and Punto both need to go up it in first gear!) I use this hill to test handbrakes and the only one of the 6 cars in the family fleet which won't hold on this hill is the Jazz which just moves slowly. The Mk1 Jazz is notorious for having a poor handbrake though and ours holds fine in less extreme situations. Lastly it occurs to me to say, with new shoes they'll need to bed down for a couple of hundred miles - maybe more if you're light on your brakes - before they'll grip properly. If I've fitted new shoes, and to a lesser extent new pads on the Jazz etc which has disc rears, then I wouldn't expect them to pass the "hill" test immediately.
 
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And so....went back to the beginning and slackened off handbrake cable completely. Pumped brakes and the LH brakes ratcheted up wonderfully. Re- adjusted cable and..... perfect hand brake! But -
Released hand brake and the brakes stayed on.
All god fun though
RRR
 
Hi again
August 2023 now. Car has sat under a tree in the garden since last post as I lost enthusiasm...
Went back to the beauty with a charged battery and she fired up immediately. For some reason the brakes now feel fine - I heard a bit of ratcheting gong on. Now to get back on the road.
SO many people want to own theses cars.....might just hang on to it:cool:
RRR
 
hey there, i am guessing your engine is the 899cc or 903cc OHV engine? at 1991 it may have the funny electronic carburettor. do you still have a choke but no distributor? (best way to tell) or if you can see the ECU, is it a Magneti Marelli brand name? it will have some numbers after the end like 8F or 5F if i remember right.
in any case look for vacuum leaks. split pipes in the engine bay will cause the MOT emissions test to fail.

feel free to post photos! we love to see pandas and under bonnet pictures.. well i do.

ive had both 903cc with electronic carburettor and 899cc with single point injection. if you post a photo up without the air filter removed i will be able to tell strait away and advise more.

as for the ball joints, they can be easy if you take the whole hub off. they are just pressed in and held in place with a circlip if i remember right. you can use a blow torch ONLY IF the ball joints have a lot of play in them so hot gasses can escape from the back of the ball. i have had them explode on me shooting the ball out of the socket with some silly high velocity.
if you have an air chisel they make life much more easy. get it in a vice and buzz it out by pushing it downwards from the middle of the hub.

the new ones will just press in with the vice and a long socket. just remove the rubber boot first or you will cut into it.

hope this helps! and welcome to panda life. its a good life :)
 
Thanks for your interest!
Looks like a single point injection to me. I replaced any dodgy looking vaccuum pipes a while ago....some were completely shot and hanging off. Ball joints done with a bit of jiggery-pokery. Such a fun machine!
RRR
 

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beautiful!! yes thats single point injection. usually its not a bad sensor that causes this, its the cat converter that has that much soot deposits that as exhaust gas flows through it, it never contacts the catalyst to convert the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. so one thing you can do to rejuvenate the cat converter is while the engine is running at a fast speed inject a fine mist of water into the engine air intake. not too much but just on the verge of causing the engine to bog down. the water hitting the cat effectively steam cleans it taking all of the built up soot deposits away from the catalyst. just be sure to put something under the exhaust at the back of the car to catch the water as it will be very black and stain whatever surface it falls on. you only have to do it for about 5 mins and thats it.
its what i had to do to get my 903cc with electronic carb through the MOT. after that it never had the issue again. i have done it on other cars with great successes too. worth trying ;)

the alternative is replacing the cat converter which is totally unnecessary as it can be cleaned as above.

if you have the engine management light on (the red injector light) that could be the lambda o2 sensor on the exhaust faulty. if not it is still fine.

i would have though that on yours being a 1991 it would only be a single wire o2 sensor? at max a 3 wire.
the wire colours are as follows:
Black wire is the sensor reading wire.
the 2x white wires are for the built in heater (usually the part that fails however it will still work once it has been running for a while)
Grey wire is just an earth wire.

you can run a 3 or 4 wire sensor on a 1 wire ecu. you just use the single black wire and leave the other wire disconnected.
on vehicles without a turbo, the lambda (o2) sensor is narrow band and quite cheap.
however for vehicles with a turbo, they use a wide band sensor.. which can be quite expensive.

hope this helps!
 
Such a response! Top forum.
Mine is in fact a 1995 - no warning lights on and runs sweet as a nut and clean so I'm hoping the vaccuum pipe changes have done their trick. If not it'll be time for the Cat steam clean:eek:
Cheeeers
RRRR
 
Haha, I was just scanning the forum having bought a Panda at the weekend up in Bethune in the Pas de Calais and then drove it down to my house near Angouleme. It's the same edition and same year although in green. Luckily I bought it with 20 months of MOT, so nothing immediate but bushes are on advisories. I have noticed a slight lean at the back to the left so I am going to replace the springs and probably shocks, it all looks original stuff with mileage of of a verified 30,000 its not a massive surprise. Where abouts are you?
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Very tidy!
I'm not far from you, near Rochechouart 87.
Bon courage
RRRR
 
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