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[rexy]

Had the pleasure yesterday of fixing the handbrakes in the sedan and hatch.

Both had the same symptom of the ratchet failing to hold the brake on.
The hatch turned out to be easy, the small spring holding the ratchet engaged was missing. A quick hunt through the shed found a close enough replacement. Good as gold.

The sedan was another story.

I had previously tried and failed to work out what was wrong some time ago and after giving up had grafted in a subaru liberty centre lever style handbrake. Never worked that well despite solid mounting. Always needed to be adjusted to the end of the cable and was still average.
I remember someone posting a while ago about the release lever potentially ending up too short after previous breakage of the threaded end. A quick look some time ago suggested this might be the underlying problem. Bought the rare spares replacement part.
When I looked yesterday with fresh eyes there were other problems also evident. Someone (probably me) had fitted a big spring to help load up the ratchet mechanism. Problem is it was so thick it was lifting the release rod up and partially disengaging the mechanism.
Still, the rod also seemed short and was sticking.
Pulled it out and measured against the new one - identical, same length and not bent!
The solution was to trim back the plastic under the handle to allow it to sit in a little more. Could also have trimmed the thread engagement end of the knob if needed. Also needed to make sure the little plastic grommet on the shaft was properly located in the support hole half way along its path.
Also took off the second gigantic spring helping the pedal return on release that I had also presumably added in frustration - I am good at supressing bad memories.

I dont know how it ended up that the factory rod ended up relatively too short in this instance. Old trauma somewhere along the line perhaps but I couldnt see any evidence. Slight dash warpage? Who knows.

Same problem, two different solutions.
Unopened rare spares handbrake rod and Knob for sale!