freelander 2 hand brake not very good

[NotBenny]

The hand brake on my freelander 2 isn't great - the travel/cable tension seems okay but even when I've pulled the hand brake as tight as I can (and then subsequently need two hands to remove it!) the car doesn't always hold. My drive is a reasonable slope, so I don't like the idea of the car being left loaded up on the parking pawl all the time, is the only course of action to strip down the rear brakes and inspect the shoes (as I understand it's an internal shoe/drum mechanism)?

[paintman]

Yes, you need to strip & inspect the shoes & mechanism to ensure it's clean (no contamination on the shoes) all working & properly adjusted.
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sKOyjeI-f4
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC80elEy1XU
Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiTKtXkPC34

[NotBenny]

paintman said:

Yes, you need to strip & inspect the shoes & mechanism to ensure it's clean (no contamination on the shoes) all working & properly adjusted.
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sKOyjeI-f4
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC80elEy1XU
Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiTKtXkPC34

thanks for the links, very useful - I'll be giving it a quick service some time this week so will get the rear discs off for a peak while it's inside.

Since the hand brake doesn't use the same friction material as the primary rear brakes, would lightly applying the hand brake whilst driving (obviously only for short periods of time at low speed) help clean up the braking surfaces if they are a little corroded? Or is that unlikely to bring any improvement?

[paintman]

Possibly.
If there is some contamination on the shoes then the heat generated MIGHT burn it off.
But you really need to look & see what the problem is.

[NotBenny]

Well I finally got round to having this looked at - had been waiting for a chance to look into it myself but ran out of interest!! One of the handbrake cams had seized, so the handbrake was only actuating one side of the brakes.