Outer Limits 4x4 Board

just wondering if anyone can tell me how to make my pedal harder so it dosn't go down so far and so i dont have to give it a pump before i actually break, i dont think i need to bleed anything ive taken the small rubber grommet of the inside of the drum housing but not to sure where i go from there to

one addjust my handbreak to make it tighter
and get my pedal tighter????

Anyone give us some info that would be great i dont normally stuff around with breaks so dont have much of a clue. thanks for any help

Don't mess with the brakes unless you have at least a basic knowledge of how they work, a manual and are mechanical/hands-on minded - playing with brakes, well, its your life and the life of those on the road around you...

If you need to pump the brakes to get decent braking, or soft/spongy pedal then it sounds like you have air in your lines - they need to be bled and perhaps even flushed - a two person job (generally).

When you lift the lid on the fluid reservoir, is the liquid inside one uniform colour, or is it clouded/mixture of colours? Cloudy indicates contamination.

I have no idea what it would cost to have a shop do it, but if you're unsure, well, brakes arent something you want to be messing with - they are after all the difference between life and death.

yea thanks nar i know i've checked all that just wanted to know how the shoes could be adjusted so that there out further closer to the drum itself, think i've sorted it out anyway.

The grommets you've removed allow access to the adjusters. They should only go one way.

Jack the rear end up and apply a couple of notches of handbrake. Then turn the adjuster until the rears start to bite, but only just.

You should find this will give you a ballpark adjustment and a better pedal.

Having said that, once mine start to get to the stage of feeling worn in the rear like that, I tend to replace them. It's a really simple job IF you have the correct bolt to wind the drums off AND a pair of sidecutters to work the retainer springs with. Once you've done a set of drum brakes using sidecutters to manage the springs, you'll never have any further dramas with drum brake relines.

BTW, if you don't manage to sort them by Easter, I may be in Torquay during the second week of the school hols if you need a hand.

cheers aj but all sorted getting done tonight just used a metric bolt worked fine to remove the drums pads had heaps of meat left on them, thanks for the help.

Permanent solution to Feroza rear brakes - replace them with disks

And BTW they are actually supposed to self adjust via a ratchet mechanism of the handbrake - pull it on a few times and its "supposed" to adjust the pads.

MM, on the topic of rear disc brake conversions, how would you recommend going about it?

From memory, you've converted the rear axle to a hilux/hiace setup which came with discs as standard.

Looking at the rear brake setup on mine, it would appear that I would need to fab up a caliper mount where the drum currently hooks up to the axle.

Does the nissan calipers on your setup fit over the stock discs? How easy was it to hook up the handbrake to the nissan calipers?

Yes it not feroza, no it didn't come with disks.

When i made the axles for it, I included an extra set of tapped holes to take a Feroza solid front disk on the back face of the axle.

Made a caliper mount to go onto the bolts that originally held the drum backing plate and used 180SX Nissan calipers.

Pintara ( and some other nissans ) can be used but the 180SX calipers have the cable handbrake ( works on the disk pads not a seperate drum ) running out behind the diff housing rather than parallel to the chassis which is slightly better IMO Very minom mod reguired to hold the handbrake cables onto the body - but over the handbrake is dead easy.

I also had the 180SX calipers so that sealed it.

Works VERY well didn't even need to fit a proportioning valve.

Be very wary of using a caliper designed for the front of anything as a rear.... apart from handbrake issues they are simply too large and give far to much rear bias. Stick with a setup designed for the rear.