T5 rear brake question

[jaz]

Long story short, I owe a mate a favour so I agreed to get his T5 through the MOT while he's off travelling the world... my question is: how much travel is normal for the rear brake pedal on one of these? The brake locks the wheel up fine but the pedal seems to have a lot of movement, only stopping about 1/2" above the floorboard. I've had the drum off and it doesn't look excessively worn, and there's plenty of meat on the shoes. The cable adjuster is fully on though, so there's no more room for manoeuvre there. I haven't looked at the pedal end yet (it's just started raining ) - is there any adjustment possible there?

Do you think the tester will knock it back with this amount of travel? I have very little experience of these 'traditional' type of braking systems and really don't know what's permissible. Could it be that the cause of this is the cable stretching?

[skrappey]

Quite possible, loosen the clamp and pull some through.

[jaz]

Dec 21, 2008 17:53:30 GMT skrappey said:

Quite possible, loosen the clamp and pull some through.

But if it's stretched to such an extent is it safe to continue using it or should I fit a new one?

[jaz]

I've figured it out - the threaded rod on the wheel end of the cable was bent, so when I ran the adjuster up it stopped before it had actually reached the end. Just the front brake and inoperative front indicators to sort now, chuck on a new back tyre and I reckon that'll be job done.

Nice little scoot this, I could quite fancy one of these myself ;D

[jaz]

OK, the indicators are sorted now. One was a broken earth wire, but the other was down to the handlebar switch. I thought I'd post this in case anyone else has this problem:

- check the switch for dry joints - they were all bad on this one.
- I also found a wire that had been incorrectly routed behind the switch allowing it to rub on the screw holding the switch to the bars. The insulator had worn through and the wire was shorting out causing lovely blue sparks but not the flashing I was hoping for

Anyway, I resoldered the joints in the switch and fixed the bare wire with a bit of heat shrink tubing and it's good to go.