First bash at the new handbrake setup. Not happy with the Sierra cut and clamp setup I decided to look for an alternative.
With my daily drive being a Rover I looked at the setup in the car and in the manual for the drum set up. The Rover has a twin cable setup that I thought would fit. Off to the scrappy for a Rover 200 lever and the clamp that holds the cables and down to the motor factor for a new cable. £35 a side for Rover 200 cables! Gulp. No way, off to ebay. One rover 200 cable in the post as a taster and the bloody thing was about 7 foot long with 4 huge P type clamps. No good, too long.
Back on ebay to look at the pictures of other cables I thought the Freelander one looked the same (ends) but looked a lot shorter. Ordered one right cable for another trial fit.
The spring on the drum end of the cable was about 2/3 longer than the Sierra one so out with the snips and it was soon the length required. The connection through the back plate is OK but I had to remove the spring clip to ge it in. Cable tension will hold it in place. So success on one side and another cable ordered off the bay I have all the makings of an unmolested (slightly) OEM setup.

Because I had a lot of inner cable slack with cutting the spring down I had to move the cable clamp at the lever end back to compensate. This meant the clamp ended up over the diff, so there is one bolt through the existing chassis bracket and the back bolt goes down just in front of the diff casting. To this I have a small 1" plate with a nut welded on thats sits under the diff casting and pulls the new bracket down onto it.

The Rover 200 handle has a neat over the top mechanism which suits this type of car much better I think. The mountings are shorter than the Sierra ones and also on the wrong side. I need to make a plate to bridge the two bars welded to the chassis and bolt the handle to that.
No dramas so far, the handle comes up through the tunnel cover in the same place and I may enlarge the hole a bit more as the Rover handle has a nice rubber gaiter that rises with the handle filling the gap. I just need to move that fuel pipe thats in the way, re-route the wiring a bit and flatten out the cable angle a bit and jobs a gudden!


Got my new Acewell as well this week and have it temporarily wired up. No dramas so far apart from the brake warning light is on all the time. A session with the multimeter should have that sorted. Its a lot bigger than i thought it would be and does everything I need. Not sure whether to mount it onto the face of the dashboard or mount it on top of the steering column.

Its just I hate drilling holes in the nice shiny virgin fibreglass!

And the hardest bit tonight? Getting the pictures up on here!!!