Fitting new hand brake cables

1st May 2007
The MOT behind me and with broken handbrake cables thanks to the gorilla testing the vehicle. When will they ever learn about VW Beetles and their derivatives.

I had used a conventional shortening cable kit for the job , which had pulled out from the shorteners even though I had used thread lock.

I had discovered some useful cable hardware from my local boat chandler and with the 3mm thimbles, cleats and clamps. I was intending to shorten the other end of the cable by using the thimble to replace the end that fits the lever inside the brake drum.

This solution seemed much easier to get a strong fixing with as the standard shortening kit used a small grub screw to fasten the cable in a threaded bolt.

The original hardware would run up to the hand brake and i proposed to shorten the cable in the drum and use the thimble and clamps (I had two versions) to loop the cable back into the same shape as the original. Although I have not seen this done before the same principle is used to fix main stays on boats. The main stay being the wires that hold up the mast. They take an enormous amount of strain as they can support two sails and a spinicker with the full force of a force three on them. I hope they will therefore be able to hold 620kg of beach buggy more effectively.

The handbrakes cables are fitted by removing the rear wheels and then the brake drums from each side of the car. This then gives access to the cables so that they can be removed from the drums and then once they are unbolted from the hand brake they will pull through out of the car.

I intended to fix the handbrake end of the cables in place and measure the cable lengths with the drum exposed. This solution seemed much simpler than trying to shorten the cables between the seats.

I tried shortening the cables with the fixings I had brought and found them very hard to use as they where very difficult to get the cable thimble in the correct position. I tried several times and failed with the handbrake cables being the wrong length. I came away and scratched my head and eventually found a ship chandlers workshop that put the thimble on the end and secure it with a crimped fixing in their machinery. The result of this was a very clean fixture. I measured my cable lengths initially as 136.5cm for the passenger side and 141cm for the drivers side. I took the cables and had them shortened. Unfortunately one side was still to long and I had to go and have it shortened and reduced in length from 141cm to 138cm. I was unable to get another handbrake cable for several days as the supplier I used was out of stock. I will have to write a new post when the passenger side cable comes in and can be fitted.

Cable lengths:
Passenger Side138cm
Drivers Side: 136.5cm