Technical Uno handbreak...err...not so good

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Technical Uno handbreak...err...not so good

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so i went out for a drive on this nice sunny day and i was comming up a steep and i mean steep road where i had to stop for the traffic lights...

as i stopped i put the clutch down and applyed the breaks as per usual... then thought..oh ******** my handbreak sucks....

yes i was stuck..i put the handbreak on as hard as i could and it rolled back...no good...so i yanked it a little more and it was still creeping back...

now i was starting to wonder how i was going to get out of this.....

i took the handbreak off and held the car with the footbreak...this was fine but...how the **** was i going to go farward without rolling back :confused:

yeah it was tricky and i stalled twice trying to get the clutch up and jump on the throttle.... in the end i got it tho and shot off.

well the point is this was kinda scary and i dont wanna do it again...i cant just hold the car with the clutch because it starts to burn which isnt good.

what can i do? from my driving lessons i was told i should be able to pull the handbreak up between 3 and 6 clicks...which i can just but it doesnt hold the car.

Thank You,
Ryan Edge
 
ah that old chestnut...manys the time ive sat in fear at the dreaded lights, on a hill etc etc

on one occasion i ripped the handbrake up so hard in terror, snapped the fricking cable....not a good day as the heavens were opening up above me at the time...still

loose handbrake cable, i think its usual on them for one line to go from the base of the lever to one rear corner, and another shorter cable to work of that first one to the second corner, so all round tightening may help

if your rear pads/shoes are particularly worn down that too maybe a factor, esp as the line is not pulling them out so far

try the cable first and go from there
 
the handbrake lever arm that goes into the back plate and operates on the shoes will be seized solid where it pivots inside the drum.
 
Not sure if this is particularly good practice (blame my racing days) but in my car (escort) you can put your foot half on the break and the other half on the accellerator. You can start off using the ball of your right foot to hold the car on the foot break, and side of your foot to press the accellerator, once you've got the revs up gently lift off the break and slide your foot over to the accellerator. Obviously you want to try and avoid pressing both pedals down for a prolonged period, but that worked for me and saved me hand break some abuse.

I won't tell you about my left foot breaking and clutchless gear changes :D There are some coppers on here you know!
 
jimybob said:
the handbrake lever arm that goes into the back plate and operates on the shoes will be seized solid where it pivots inside the drum.

this wasnt too helpful to me being a n00b mechanic... and well done alex...i did try that but staring at the peddles thinking how the hell can i press all three at different levels at once??!?!?! my attempt wasnt so successful lol
 
The Uno hand brake is known for it unusability. It is a stupid design of one cable going all the way to one wheel, and another wire hooked on mentioned wire with a plastic wheel for the other wheel.

Bad sentence, but hey, I'm not English either... :)

Anyway. Start by checking brake drum for excessive wear and also the brake shoes. It might help to change shoes. But what I think will work, is the thing I do not know the word of, but it is a lever which is connected at the brake drum with a little coil spring. It is mounted at the end of each wire. The wires and this "lever" corrodes and makes hand-braking extremely poor.

Aftermarket wires are cheap and propably 90% cheaper than Norwegian cheap in the UK, so get new wires with hoses (or WD40 a lot), new "levers" and eventually new brake shoes. This should do it... for maybe 2 years if you're lucky.

Beware. Uno handbrakes ARE terrible.

Morten.
 
jimybob said:
the handbrake lever arm that goes into the back plate and operates on the shoes will be seized solid where it pivots inside the drum.

What he's trying to say is he thinks that the hand break mechanism is siesed, and needs lubricating...

BUT, if the hand break applies what you probably need to do is just tighten the hand break cable, the break shoes have probably been warn down so you have to apply more hand break, and now they just don't make good enough contact.

Somwehere around the handbreak, either under the car or in the centre console there will be a mechanism that you can put a spanner on and tighten the cable. Not knowing Unos you should look it up in the workshop manual. But it should be a job a newbie can do. Just try to avoid over tightening the cable because this will cause the hand break to be permanantly on, which will over heat your breaks (and possibly boil your break flid causing failure of the rear breaks)

An easy way to check if you've tightened the cable up too much is by turning the rear wheels with the car jacked up, they should be easy to turn with the break off, and impossible to turn with it on.

Hope that helps you.
 
Morten and Alex are, I feel, right on the money here...

When you crawl under the back of the Uno, you can see a flat lever disappearing into the brake backplate. This lever has the cable attached to it. Unfortunately the lever corrodes and doesn't slide easily in the backplate like it should. You could probably sand it clean and grease it with copper grease, but new levers are very cheap from your FIAT dealer.

Here are my personal picks for the Uno handbrake:
- The levers, as mentioned. Also take the drum off and make sure the shoes have sufficient lining thickness - at least 1.5mm, preferably more. While you're there, make sure that the brake cylinder pistons move smoothly when you pry them away from the shoes with a screwdriver (though, that's a separate issue).

- With the levers and brakes working, next spray some lithium spray grease, or WD40, or whatever, on the lever-mounted pulley on the suspension back arm.

- Make sure the lever pulls up five clicks - if more or less, then use two 10mm spanners to adjust the nuts under the handbrake lever. The nuts have to be tightened against each other in order to lock them.

- The lever itself can usually be greatly improved. Remove the front seats, remove the carpet holders, and lift the carpet back. The lever is bolted to the floor in a flimsy way. You can improve on this with some large washers and longer bolts with nuts. (13mm hex head). You can also take the lever pivot pin out (it has a spring clip) and add an extra washer to take out the slack. In other words, with no welding or other permanent mods, you can make the lever a lot more solid and know that it's not going to tear out of the mountings when you really need it.

I've had a couple of Unos with torn-out handbrake levers (the standard captive nuts rip out of the bodywork). It is possible to make the handbrake work well, though as Mort says, it might be a temporary achievement!

-Alex
 
wouldnt the weight of the object have to be atleast equal to the weight of the car? and erm....... i dont think i can lift that on my own.... me and my step dad lifted my uno when it fell off the jack but that was just an inch or two between us
 
Alternatly be ready for the oncoming hill and select the appropriate gear , then just hold on the clutch , untill it smokes a little :bang:
 
My handbrake works fine.

Although, it's either on or off.

1 and 2 clicks get nothing - 3rd click equates to locked wheels or no way in hell are you rolling down this hill buddy.
 
Muzzie - possibly your handbrake cable has been over-tightened. People tend to do them up (under the car) to try and improve the performance of the handbrake, but in fact all it does is to make the lever harder to pull up (and therefore, not effective until the very last 'click').

I still believe (even six months later!) that with the drum setup, the levers that go through the backplate are 90% of the problem, just as jimybob said.

Then again, I've just remembered that you (like me) have rear wheel discs, so I would suspect that the action would not be as progressive as for drum brakes.

Can you please do something about your signature - that slab of Ford iron is starting to grate with me :D I might have to make a nice big signature of my Toyota!

-Alex
 
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ahh back to this thread, i noticed my handbreak has next to no effort on the drivers side wheel... thats half the problem, its caused by the stupid setup that pulls the cable, i think it could be fixed by adding a pull on the rear beam to hold the cable.
 
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