BX Handbrake fun...

It needs to be (it's to do with the way the car sinks when it's stopped, having a handbrake on the back wheels and the car in gear would be a bad thing at this point (and hi adrian if you're reading - yes, you did point this out to me)).

Unlike the CX which had a separate pair of pads for the handbrake and a dreadful adjusting mechanism, the BX works on the main pads. Take the wheel off and have a look - I think it's probably easier than trying to explain it.

(choice is of cable or caliper being seized - I think I'd hope it's the cable!)

cheers, clive

I thought the front handbrake was needed in order to get enough efficiency on a light rear end car? Certainly that was the case on commer vans in the

mrcheerful

All the BMC FWDs managed ok with a rear wheel handbrake.

What normally happens is that where the cable runs through the supporting bracket, the PVC covering gets damaged, water gets in the cable, and it gradually rusts up. I ran my old BX for over 200,000 miles, and apart from a couple of pairs of handbrake cables, the front calipers never gave any trouble. The main problem tends to be the rear brakes,with no weight in the back of the car they don't do anything, and the discs get rusty, and the pistons stick :-( It may be worth running round for a while with a bag of cement or a heavy toolbox in the back of the car to give them something to do.

PTE

Yuk!

I'm fairly sure it's the cable that's siezed, as the disc spins freely - I checked when the wheels were off for new tyres at the end of feb.

Is liberal application of WD40 (away from the discs and pads, natch :-) and some wiggling a reasonable way to free it up?

If it's the caliper, is replacement better than disassembly and lubing?

Ta for the info!

I have a toolbox in there already - kinda needs it :->

Innerestin'. Are the cables an easy swap then? And easily available?

Cheers!

Don't know about that Saab used it on the ealy 9* models, the 99, the early 900's

Later 900's swapped to rear handbrake to use similar parts to the then new 9000, and this carried on through Next Generation 900 (Cavalier in drag).

GSF list them for about a tenner. Your local citroen dealer will probably also have them.

cheers, clive

The saab setup also helped as a primitive diff lock when I was stuck in snow :-)

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "mrcheerful ." saying something like:

Yep, sure do. Work of the Devil.

The PB model? I not only remember it, I owned one, a hideous old dog in the late 70s. And they made two handbrake arrangements, cos mine had a sticker warning about it being front wheel handbrake, although it was rear handbrake in reality. The worst thing that happened to it though was at a traffic lights in the rush hour, I was at the front of the queue, and when the lights changed, I went to take the handbrake off, only to find that when I had applied the handbrake, the handgrip had slid upwards on the handbrake lever so I couldn't press the release button. Eventually I had to open the door and get out to sort it out( the handbrake lever was down between drivers seat and door), but of course not before the lights had changed again. Made myself popular that day.

Steve

mrcheerful. ( snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

No, Clive's right.

There's a VERY simple way to demonstrate it - start a Hydraulic Cit up, put it in full high, stand hard on the brakes, and drop it to low - still on the brakes.

Pause. Still on the brakes.

The front'll come down, the rear should be held up.

Now let go of the brakes, first making sure there's no passing children standing underneath the rear. - the rear wheels are allowed to rotate again, so the suspension arms can move, lowering the car and lengthening the wheelbase.

It's also a bloody good pre-MOT check to see if the rear brakes have seized through lack of use. Again. If they're just a bit sticky, it might even help to free 'em off, but I'd clean and copaslip. The rear brakes take their pressure from the rear suspension circuit, so if the back's never got any weight in it, they do nowt. Putting the suspension onto full-high means that you've got the full system pressure pushing against the bump stops, so the brakes will do something - it's why they really ought to be on full high for the MOT brake test, to avoid an incorrect fail.