The handbrake on our peugeot 807 (2004) has never been particularly great, but lately it’s been quite bad. Yesterday when parking on a hill I pulled the lever too far, and some of the surounding plastics was dislocated, to the extent that I couldn’t release the handbrake when I got home (luckily). Time to have a go.
I pulled off the plastics around the lever and got everything seated where it should be. However it was clear that the cable was too loose (hence why I pulled the lever too much), and something else was probably the root problem. Looking along the length of the cables from the lever to the rear wheels, it’s clear there’s just one adjustment point, where the single cable from the lever meets the two cables to the wheels. And that adjustment applies only to the left (rear) wheel. I jacked up the car, and as it turned out the handbrake was completely ineffective on that wheel, it was spinning freely even when the lever was fully engaged. Turning the aforementioned adjustment nut all the way in (tightening the cable) did not help at all. Apparently the handbrake has only been working on the right side wheel for some time.
I pulled off the left wheel to get a better view at the caliper. The handbrake lever (the little lever on the caliper, that is) did not disengage fully when the handbrake was off, apparently the cable was too tight. Thinking about it, this was probably the root cause: The handbrake is self-adjustable, which is why there’s (almost) no cable adjustment. However this self-adjustment requires that the handbrake (again, at the caliper end) is fully disengaged, as there is some sort of pumping action going on.
So, assuming the caliper is working properly, there are two things one needs take care of: The cable adjustment nut needs to bee loose enough to allow the (caliper) lever to fully disengage also on the left side, and each of the three cables need to have so little friction as to allow the calipers to pull back freely. Even with a loose adjustment my left caliper wasn’t really able to pull back completely, but enough that the handbrake started to operate reasonably well. I expect I’ll replace the rear left cable, as it’s not very expensive and it looked rather rusty.
Note that this self-adjusing mechanism means that testing the operation of the handbrake is not entirely straight-forward. You need to operate the car (engine running) and brakes and handbrake for a few minutes in order to make a proper asessment of the handbrakes’ performance.