Hi all,

Just wanted to share my story on an annoying rattle I had from the rear left of my car. The winter weather is good in Bahrain for "top down" driving, so this rattle was really annoying. I lifted the car and spent 4 hours checking any possible metallic contacts including fixing ties on the oil pipes running the length of the underfloor and putting spacers/pipe insulation anywhere where I thought things might be striking.


As usual, this first attempt didn't do the trick. If it's not something you can see, then it's something you can't see. I found the rattle when I serviced the brakes. I did both the brake pads, disc rotors, brake fluid and the parking drum brake shoes & springs. It was only when I took off the rotors I noticed that the previous owner had only changed the rear parking brake shoes on the RHS and not the LHS. Therefore the brake cable tension force on the left would be slack, when the hand brake was raised, while the rear right would be engaged..



The brake cable entered the bottom of the back plate and the lack of tension in the LHS left the termination lever bouncing on the bottom. Luckily, or maybe good design, the cable termination point is sprung against the back plate. Having replaced both rear parking brake shoes and usual springs, it took adjustment of the center equaliser nut where the single hand brake cable cable splits to both LHS and RHS cables, to put equal tension on both sides onto the cable termination back spring. Don't over tighten this nut otherwise the hand brake lever is too tight and you might break the cable. It takes a couple of attempts to get it just right.

Now I can drive top down without that annoying rattle. However when I was under the car, I did notice some bottom body rust under the underseal paint on the rear right quarter panel...... That's for another time.

 

Good catch....