Brake Efficiency

[Mark H]

Hope advice is out there.
CVar was Mot'd on Friday, car passed but examiner commented on efficiency of rear brakes being poor. Is this a generic thing with the Scirocco or something to be worried about ?
Replaced front pads (Meyle), rear shoes (Meyle), rear drums, braided hoses, new fluid, taken out any slop in bulkhead linkage prior to MOT.

Any thoughts ??

Mark

[bengould]

There is a little wedge that you can adjust to make the rear brakes better. It's a bit of a pig to do but it does make a big difference.

You have to line up the drum so you can see the bottom of the wedge through one of the wheel bolt holes. Then get someone to press the brake pedal, hard, while the brakes are on get something you can poke into the hole at the end of the wedge and pull it down.
Do this a couple of times to make sure all the slack is taken out of the shoes and it will vastly improve the braking of the car.

Ben

[mark1gls]

Auto adjuster is rubbish so do as Ben said above and you will feel the difference in the braking performance, it's surprising how much the car using the rear brakes.
Try and jack up both sides of the rear so you can do both sides in one go and check you have the same amount of braking and hand brake braking on each wheel so once you have done the adjustment pop the wheel back on loosely and then you can get more leverage while spinning the wheels.

[Mark H]

Cheers guys

Mark

[james butler]

Be careful doing it this way,
I overdid mine which caused them to rub and burn the high temp paint off the drum.
These brakes are a bugger to bleed so it may be worth getting them done again in a few weeks to let any remaining air bubbles out.
Plus if you replace the wheel cylinders with the wrong type you end up with low efficiency.
I put non brake bias type of mine once by accident and realised very quickly my back brakes weren't doin anything