406 handbrake

I am having problems getting my 406 through an MOT. Everything passes except the handbrake. On the first test the tester snapped the cable trying to get the brake come on sufficiently to pass the test

I have replaced all three parts of the handbrake cable, stripped the whole mechanism down and changed the shoes. Degreased what shouldn’t have grease on and greased what should have. Everything moves smoothly but the handbrake is still pants

I have adjusted the cable and the internal knurly bolt until the shoes are just shy of the drum.

Anyone have any thoughts? Will new drums/discs make much of a difference

Putting the shoes in it appears there is only one way they will fit so the return springs don’t pop off. This puts the shoes in with both the linings closest to the expander, on other cars with drum brakes the shoes always fit so one shoe’s lining is away from the expander and the other close to it. Are the shoes in correctly or have I been sold duff shoes

A lot of questions I know for a newbee but Ii am all out of ideas

 

What type of hanbrake do you have? Some models have rear drum brakes which
double as the handbrake, others have rear disk brakes and a small brake drum
in the centre for the handbrake.

Haynes shows a picture of the ordinary drum brakes and they are as you
describe, with both linings closest to the expander. Further than this I
cannot help.

 

I have 406 2.0 hdi 90 disk rear brake. The side cables fray/wear where they chafe at the mid-mounting points and then cable outers rust which makes handbrake less efective .
I have just been through all this 3 new cables,shoes,degrease - still rubbish , and ended up building up the handbrake shoe expander mechanism with a bit of weld.
The expander is what the cable fits into and is maybe only 2mm thick on each side of the pivot point - where it wears. Also it wears at the ends where the shoes fit on. The trouble is that you cannot really tell how worn it is - unless you compared it next to a new one !
If you can move it up and down between the shoes with cable relaxed I guess you have some wear.
If you build the expander up too much you can simply cut the brake shoe slots deeper which are a bit shallow anyway.- using thin cutting disk/angle grinder until the shoes touch/nearly touch the stop on the backing plate. If it's too big the disk won't fit !!!
When the handbrake cable is pulled the expander only moves a few mm, so wear in the expander has a noticable affect and clearly the harder you pull the hand brake more wear occures.
My local dealer closed lately so I haven't found out how much these parts cost.

I know this is a zombie thread but I hope this helps someone. My 406 has 227k and got 195 on each side 26% - it struggled to get 80 when it failed and got (40 and 195) on 2nd try then 2 x 195 after weld.