Thanks to some deep reading and one silly Ah-Ha moment... I got Sven's (my 03 V70 T5) brakes stopping like champ. Nice & firm with lots of room behind the pedal. Before they would slowly sink and nearly hit the floor which made for some unnerving times sitting in stop and go traffic. I was thinking Master Cyl or worse... so what caused it?? A tiny bit of air in the ABS Module and ONE... just ONE... caliper retaining spring being mis-installed. I noticed it while bleeding the brakes for the 3rd time. What threw me is that the fronts were good.. I just redid those. The rears had tons of meat, so I left them alone... and it was the pass rear that was improperly installed, so I never looked.
So while I was under the car bleeding them, I noticed that the rear wheels have a couple degrees of rotation ability even with the parking brake fully applied. They stop hard... and I mean with a CLANK hard.. and will not move if rotated, but they move easily till then. In a parking situation, this feels like when you put an Auto in "P" and do not use the E-Brake. The car settles to the Trans Lock... bouncing stupidly. That's what this is like without the bounce. It simply rolls a few inches and stops. Both Forward and Backwards.
I realize that these are drum parking brakes. It's been a lot of years since my VW Drum Brake days, so it's hard for me to remember and not being real familiar with Volvo yet... Just how much play in the wheel is acceptable when the parking brake is set? When applied should there be zero play? Do Volvo Parking Brakes have a bit of slop?
While I'm in here and thinking about it.... I see that there are no adjustment spreaders like in a true shoe brake set-up. Presumably because you can take up the slack in the adjuster at the E-Brake lever. I found a gentleman in Europe somewhere that fitted an adjuster into the set-up. No other mods... just the simple adjuster. Does anyone know what car that came from? I've never see an shoe system that wasn't adjustable at the wheel. Seems odd!
Cheers!
K "broken" S
