Yes New cables, Disc/Drums and shoes, I'll find out ins and outs and sort that handbrake problem via adjust and test.
But snow and Christmas prevails and my old body has many problems. Next year we hear, happier new year.

 

It seems the average visitor age is pretty high here... much higher than, lets say, a Volkswagen GTI forum
Makes sense though, the minivans are not typical student cars ..
I'm 52 but I get the feeling I might not be the oldest here

 

If you bought me one free of charge I couldn't even get into a VW GTi - even in an emergency. I dumped a beautiful 2 litre Rover estate [BMW powerplant] 75 2.0 CDT SE estate free to family and bought a Multipla [yeh! I know] because of the rusty joints - my joints - not the car. Like the GV a lot, a really really lot !

 

Yes, I reckon you're right Vmaxxer, most of us are older and come from a motoring era where you could park your car at the end of your journey, no-one knew what a microprocessor was, much less find one in a car (not six like my Jag), and no-one found a car to be an "economic write-off" except by rust, not sky high parts prices, and in 1968 we thought 25 pence a GALLONUK wasn't cheap for petrol.
In 1968, my 3-bed semi in Bradford cost £2,200, and my salary was £1000pa. I was allowed to borrow money to buy a house at 2.5 times my ONE BASIC salary to buy it. In the 1960s I walked out of one job after a frank exchange of views, and had another at better pay inside half an hour. "Can you start now" he said -- "of course I can" said I. I already had my jacket off and was sitting at the workbench.
You could turn on the tv and would never see a program that had been on before, not a dozen times before like now, interspersed with utter boring rubbish. (I was in the tv business).
Happy days -- or was it because I was much younger? Certainly the youth of the 1960s were much more enthusiastic and could get somewhere in their lives. The general atmosphere was lighter, gayer (and that meant something different too!) Not many found they had to drug themselves insensible to cope with life.

If I remember anything about then, it was my little Austin A30 (actually smaller than a BMC mini) which I bought for £30 and used every day all day for work fixing tv sets for Radio Rentals, and not even using all my 6 gallonsUK a week of petrol allowance -- I did all my domestic running too inside that 6 gallonsUK. I had my little A30 Austin for around a year, it never went wrong, and I sold it for almost what I paid for it.

Leedsman.

 

The times they are changing.. indeed.
Each era has its advantages and disadvantages.. We lose some, and gain some...
Personally I find the age of the internet very interesting but I am very very glad there where no mobiles and small digital cameras around when I was a teenager and partying on in the 70's
Cars get more complicated but much more convenient and saver at the same time. When I compare working on my '86 Mercedes 190E to my 2002 GVoyager the MB is soo much easier to work on.. but the Chrysler has much more comfort to offer..

 

I'm only 63 and after owning a mk2 Espace Diesel which was easy to work on and highly reliable I bought my Voyager thinking good god this is pure Luxury. Highlight of the car is, open door and slide in, open door and slide oot. This thing about falling into a hole and positioning ones self, then crawling out on hands and knees to get oot drove my back crazy. Had a new Volvo V70 just before Espace, had a sore *** after driving it and it was no better than the much older Voyager.
Can remember 70's driving home from Edinburgh clubs in morning pissed as a fa*t, even in the snow at 3 o'clock.
Yes petrol at 25p a gallon and that coupon book that was never used.
My fav mag is Car Mechanics cos it keeps me in touch and I keep all the tips, faults and answers.

 

Price per gallon when I started driving legal was 58 1/2p [old pense] and that's when there were 240d to £1. So that's 4/8d a gallon old money.

58 ÷ 12 = 4.83 shillings

 

I remember too the petrol rationing that never was after the 1973 oil crisis. I went to the post office for a ration book, and he said "how big's your engine"? so I said "6.3 litres"(I had a 1966 390cu" Ford Galaxy, stacked headlights). And he replied "my books only go up to 2litres". So I said "that will have to do then".

Leedsman.

 

Sorry.... apologies up front, don't mean to offend anyone here..... but what the hell is this all about ??? Some kind of solution to a none existent problem ???

I've had my 2001 Voyager CRD since new, also serviced it from day 1 and I'm more than up to speed with the handbrake & how it works. If it's set up correctly & the linkages lubed then it works fine, holds on hills no problem.... Iv'e never had any MOT issues.

Having said that, things that have failed on it

Linkage lever pivot siezed up, causing shoes to drag on drum/disc, wearing both out. I fitted & greased new linkages, shoes & drums/discs that was at 80K miles, its at 150K now on the same set of shoes & discs.

There should be no problem adjusting the shoes as long as you don't have a wear lip on the inside of the drum, you can manually adjust the shoes up & slip the drum/disc on & it will be fine with minimal lever travel.

If you have a wear lip inside the drum, then back off the shoes, fit the drum & then adjust the shoes up using a screwdriver through the removable rubber grommet in the backplate until you get the required clearance to the drum/shoe. Otherwise just take an angle grinder to the inside of the drum & grind the lip off... failing that buy new discs they're cheap enough.

This is how I've done it for the past 13yrs and it's been fine.

Every so often I remove the discs, blow out the crap, grind off any small lip in the drum, adjust a click or two, spray a bit of white grease on the linkage and put it back together.... works fine :-)

I find the self adjusters work OK as long as they are clean and lubed with copper grease, but I generally just do the above every couple of years and it's fine. The self adjusters just take up a bit of slack and give less lever travel.

 

HiYa matgriff,

You are not offending me, what you have said is precisely what I said. If you read the thread [s] its about people who did not do their own maintenance, but paid others only to find many years later having reasonably expected a paid for garage to do the job properly - that it was not done properly. Most of the threads are not about the MOT pass but about the vans top-hat designed hand brake and its [in]capacity to hold a vehicle of this weight on a hill.