Bloody Rover has failed its MOT. First MOT failure I've had in four years. Still, only on the handbrake - 80kg each side which is a bit comforting. Tried tightening the cable but it looks like the rear calipers need the pads taking out, winding back and resetting.
Winding them in is to make room for the extra thickness of new pads. It will not improve your efficiency. Effectively you will be un-adjusting them and the threaded piston will come out again, and until it does so you will have almost zero brakes..
The poor efficiency is due to a lack of friction. Are you sure that adjusting the cable has not improved matters? Have you jacked it up and tried to turn the wheels by hand with the handbrake on?
From the description, it sounds like someone has tried adjusting the handbrake cable, when it was the callipers that were out of adjustment. Adjust the handbrake cable so that the levers on the calliper are completely at their rest position, when the handbrake is released, then pump the brake/handbrake a few times, to let the callipers adjust themselves up. There should be no free-play in the cable, but the levers should not be pulled at all with the handbrake released. It may be that one of the adjusters has failed in the calliper, and whoever adjusted the handbrake did it that way to try and compensate.
If you buy a new or reconditioned calliper it will come with a warning not to apply the handbrake until all the free play has been taken up hydraulically (I.a. by the footbrake), otherwise it damages something or other inside. IIRC Granados use the same type of callipers on the rear, if not identical, though I haven't heard of any experiencing the same problem...
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