Bargain Basement Electric

[NewcastleFalcon]

Hope yours works out equally as well, Neil!

Thanks Richard much appreciated!

Returned indoors for a cup of tea! I've done the calliper piston polish up, it comes out when you press the brake pedal and you can push it back in. While 2 years ago I think I reported the bleed nipple as 8mm, it is now 7mm and a bit where 7 is too small an 8 is too big. Leaving well alone on that score at the minute so the piston in and out is brake pedal push out, then push back with a wedge of wood, and a flat bolster chisel as a lever.

In decades of diy car fixing I clearly must be missing something in how disc brakes work, and those sliders.

At the moment I cant quite resolve why with the calliper piston fully pushed in as you to to fit the brake pads in position, and the brake pads in place for an easy fit for the positioning of the calliper, why when I place the slider bolts in the appropriate holes....and screw the bolts in do I have a rock solid disc with the pad/pads clamped to the disc, and the calliper piston retracted and not interfering with play.

Must be doing something wrong! Can't quite work out what.

Neil

[RichardW]

If the piston is retracted and there is a space between the piston and pads, I can't see how it can lock on, unless the slider is jammed, or you have a too long bolt somewhere that is fouling the disc?

[NewcastleFalcon]

If the piston is retracted and there is a space between the piston and pads, I can't see how it can lock on, unless the slider is jammed, or you have a too long bolt somewhere that is fouling the disc?

I couldn't get past that either but...

I overlooked the only other obvious conclusion, when the entire calliper pads and sliders were removed the disk was still locked...I had assumed that all was well with the nearside rear "shoes within the disk" foot operated parking brake because that had passed the tester's test while the offside got the non-operation fail.

No even though the foot operated pedal for the parking brake was not on, the brake was at the rear nearside wheel.

Abandoned for the afternoon now at a positive if not complete point. Score so far

Irritation 1 satisfaction 0

Neil

[RichardW]

Hopefully you can free it off enough to get the disc off without having to resort to violence!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Irritation 3 Satisfaction 0

The foot operated parking brake is completely ineffective both sides now. Is it a simple case of calmly taking the wheels off, shining a torch into the little hole in the disc, and clicking the adjuster little cog a few times either up or down to set the foot operated parking brake at the ideal level so that when it is applied it locks the wheels effectively.

I doubt it, made a token attempt while charging up fully expect to have to dismantle and rebuild the whole shebang of the brake shoes the levers cables adjusters and silly little springs to get the thing to work. Small consolation appears to be that the rear disc brakes work without binding on application and release of the proper footbrake, but not worthy of a score on the satisfaction side today.

Neil

[CitroJim]

At least it's progress Neil

[RichardW]

You need to be able to rotate the disk to get the hole in the right position, which might be a challenge if the brake is jammed on! Must be some sort of failure going on - part of the mech has perhaps seized up and the tester pushing it hard has jammed it.

Violence may ensure I am afraid....!

[NewcastleFalcon]

You need to be able to rotate the disk to get the hole in the right position, which might be a challenge if the brake is jammed on! Must be some sort of failure going on - part of the mech has perhaps seized up and the tester pushing it hard has jammed it.

Violence may ensure I am afraid....!

I don't have a problem with the jammed on disk now Richard. The offside one is free running and I have had the nearside one off, done a clean up of the shoes inside the disk area, and reassembled the calliper and pads and drove it to charge it up. I thought I would use the time to see how this all affected the foot-operated parking brake which was when I discovered that it was totally inoperative on both rear wheels. Having reached the end of the tether that was left for today.

Small consolation my particular version of the Leaf went retrograde with the parking brake and its cables pulling things, whereas the earlier versions had some sort of electronic thing. In theory the parking brake problem should be quite sortable although I feel my general malaise for doing the job may be translating into a bit of murphy's law as it progresses

Thanks for the interest and tips

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Irritation 3 Satisfaction 0

...fully expect to have to dismantle and rebuild the whole shebang of the brake shoes the levers cables adjusters and silly little springs to get the thing to work.

Looks like I have turned prophetic. Indeed the setting the shoes to the correct position had zero effect on the foot-operated parking brake not working, and the dismantling was necessary and revealed the crux of the problem. The cable responsible for operating the handbrake mechanism transmits a pull and push to the backplate but not on the critical few inches inside the "drum". The last bit of the cable before the backplate is "swollen" which I seem to recall from one of the Nissan leaf forums. May need a new handbrake cable. Meantime spraying stuff working backwards and forwards, pedal on and off many times is the current strategy. That's the offside, expecting the nearside to be the same story.

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

An excellent simple summary of the Brake cable replacement job on a Nissan Leaf.

Steveev My Nissan Leaf https://www.speakev.com/threads/nissan- ... st-3327895

Spoiler: show

A few falcon originals in the wrong place see viewtopic.php?p=769193#p769193

Falcon Original

Falcon Original

Falcon Original

Falcon Original

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Whatsthisthen

Relax, I'll tell you.

It is an aluminium bracket/cable guide which screws to the rear steel brake backplate of a Nissan Leaf.
Its job is to provide a little hole through which the handbrake cable enters the backplate.
What happens next? Well the picture shows the picture 8 years later. The hole no longer exists and the handbrake cable cannot pull the operating lever on the brake shoe as the former hole has closed up due to corrosion.

The last thing I want to do is to break the cable they are expensive for a brake cable from Nissan, and little aftermarket in them although Lithuania has a few, but that bracket/guide needs removing/replacing/freeing off. I can see me destroying that bracket to save the cable.

Falcon Original

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Close of play today ended on a small but excessively time-consuming bit of progress but still some way off scoring the first satisfaction point.

Managed to remove the cable relatively intact from the corroded up aluminium cable guide, with a careful just enough destruction of the guide. No power machinery used, careful hacksaw and file use, followed by a series of small nibbles with a small pair of pincers.

Falcon Original

Falcon Original

Will probably have to recreate the cable entry guide in some shape or form, but the cable is saved and functional.

Neil

[CitroJim]

Gosh Neil, this is becoming quite an adventure!

Following with great interest... But when will car designers and manufacturers come to understand aluminium and steel do not make good bedfellows

[NewcastleFalcon]

Reassembled the always fiddly brake shoe reassembly...its got new shoes now. Youtube vids can be excellent, and I learned a little bit of a technique which helped with the spring re-installation. The chap used a screwdriver as a lever and "slid" the springs into position down the screwdriver shaft. Have to say with the geometry of the springs in the leaf it made the task relatively straightforward. The Leaf also doesnt have the coil spring shoe retainers, but a bent bit of metal as a clip which was far easier

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Never mind Lithuania or Nissan, Gloucestershire is the place for Nissan Leaf handbrake cables

£48 each more like it and it’s from tried and trusted EV specialists Cleevely

https://www.cleevelyev.co.uk/ev/nissan/ ... e-rear-rh/

Screenshot
https://www.cleevelyev.co.uk/ev/nissan/leaf-ze0/handbrake-cable-rear-rh/

Neil