Fitting a manual handbrake to a Renault Trafic 2010 Disabili

[Dogface830]

I’m after some advice and thought here might be a good place to start. I drive a Renault Trafic adapted for my disability needs. It has all the usual stuff lift, hand controls etc. One of its adaptions is an electric handbrake. This was fine for the last 10 years. When it broke I had it replaced at a cost of £1300. 18 months later and it has broken again. The company who fitted it told be the life expectancy is between 18 months to 2 years. On a £1300 part!! Needless to say I had issue with such poor quality to be told there is only one company that make them in Sweden & that the quality recently has become really bad. I’m furious at this news and want to find a solution that doesn’t involve replacing it every 18 months. My question is could I have a manual handbrake fitted? Because my hand function is pretty poor it wouldn’t be something I could use but it would be enough to pass the MOT. It’s a 2010 Renault Trafic short wheel base.

[South tdf]

Most of the fittings for the original handbrake will be there so you just need someone to confirm the bits you need to reinstall it. There are companies like Gosling hand controls who offer assistance handles for handbrakes once fitted which will help with the usage.

[Smint]

Has anyone stripped the offending item presumably made of cheese to see exactly what is happening?

I ask because sometimes its a relatively inexpensive part that fails, often made of inferior material, designed in failure kerching?

When one of wifeys cutting machines packed up i stripped it and found the fault to be a simple nylon gear that had chewed up, after a bit of poking about found a cottage industry chap on ebay who could machine all sorts of parts out of metal, sent him the offending part and sure enough a well made metal gear arrived a week later...sorry, no details of the chap it was several years ago now.

[Ham_and_Jam]

Did they tell you the life expectancy was less than 2 years when you had it replaced?

I would have thought that is not to the quality expected, and therefore should be repaired FOC regardless of any warranty.

[Dogface830]

They kept its life expectancy to themselves when they fitted it. I’ve just remembered that I returned it after 6 months because it broke and they replaced it free of charge. So the current one has lasted little over a year.