Changed brake shoes - now no handbrake

[itiejim]

I have just changed the rear shoes on my daily smoker, a FIAT Multipla and found that I have no handbrake and quite a "long" footbrake.

When I removed the old shoes I wound the self adjusters in fully before fitting the new ones and winding them back out just enough to take any slack out of them.

So, will they adjust themselves up (quickly) or do I need to remove drums, adjust up, retry etc until I have a light drag on the drum - like in the olden days! The problem with this is that there is no adjustment with the drum in place and the adjuster itself doesn't have a hex or anything to make adjustment easy!

I am certain that the shoes are the correct ones and that they are fitted as per the ones I removed.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated

[garagewidow]

were the drums worn with a lip/ridge on the outer edge?adjusting the shoes up enough to get the drums over will mean extra travel on the pedal if there is one.

[andip]

did you completely loosen the hand brake cable off before hand? with new shoes fitted and correctly adjusted up. i would personally manually adjust the shoes up as fiats self adjusters arent the best. then adjust the cables up so you have 6-8 clicks on the handbrake