Mondeo Mk3 handbrake adjustment (keyhole bodge method)

Disclaimer: I am a complete amateur at this stuff. Please do your own research and use your own common sense. I'm not responsible for any damage you do to yourself or to your car. I'm just sharing my own experiences here for the hell of it :)

I had to adjust the handbrake a couple of weeks ago in readiness for the car’s MOT. It would have been a failure otherwise as there was a lot of free play in the handbrake and it took a total of eight ‘clicks’ to get the thing fully engaged.

( Some Mk3’s have an automatically adjusting handbrake which I’ve heard is not very good, but fortunately the one on my ‘54 plate Mk3 is the manually adjusted type ).

You take up the slack on the cables going to the rear wheels by tightening up a 16mm adjuster nut on the equaliser bar that the cables are attached to; this is located above the heatshield (a dimpled metal sheet) which is fixed above the middle silencer box. I managed to reach this area of the car without having to jack it up but it probably would have been easier if I had done so.

The heatshield is held on with 10mm nuts and the Haynes manual says that you should remove this, or slide it right out of the way, so you can then hold the other side of the adjuster mechanism steady with a 6mm spanner while tightening the adjuster nut. So please follow that correct advice and do it the right way, okay?

For myself, I could see that other bodgers before me had just removed one heatshield nut and then bent the rear offside corner of it down far enough to be able to access the adjuster. So that is what I did too. The equaliser bar and 16mm adjuster nut is thus revealed…

I had to use a deep 16mm socket on this and also, as I opted for this ‘keyhole bodge’ method, a very long extension and universal joint as follows…

I checked that the handbrake mechanisms on both rear wheels were not seized up before making any adjustments (get someone to watch them as you engage the handbrake, or point a video camera at them if working solo). Then you can adjust the nut… with the handbrake released, of course.

You are supposed to tighten the nut until “there is clearance of 1 mm between one of the rear caliper’s handbrake levers and its stop”. I’m not sure how much clearance I ended up with but after two or three full turns on the adjuster nut I had a nice firm handbrake which only took four to five clicks to fully engage, so I was happy ( the MOT tester was too! )