Good day,

My '07 Focus recently failed its technical inspection due to a hand brake issue, quoting: "SIGNIFICANT ERROR: Parking brake performance and efficiency: Braking efficiency is insufficient. - left 89% weaker". Keep in mind this text is translated into English.

As far as I understand, there is a hand brake cable tensioning nut right next to the hand brake lever, which can be used to tension the hand brake. The thing is that the reason the inspection failed is that only one of the sides performed badly. To my understanding, if I tension this nut, both sides would be affected, obviously, effectively still leaving the left side weaker than the right. I have read that in order to get to the equalizer, which is located on the underside of the car, the exhaust has to be taken off, which seems too big of a hassle to do myself. 

My point is, would anyone have advice on how to go about this, and is there a way I can deal with this by myself? If not, then taking the car to a shop it is.

Thanks!

If it has drum brakes, the adjustment needs to be made inside the drum.

The shoes will be stuck too far apart, because the automatic adjusters stop automatically adjusting after a few years.

If it has disc brakes then you have a faulty caliper.

Either way, this will not be resolved by tightening the cable.  That will hurt cause the 'good' wheel to be locked on permanently.

24 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

If it has drum brakes, the adjustment needs to be made inside the drum.

The shoes will be stuck too far apart, because the automatic adjusters stop automatically adjusting after a few years.

If it has disc brakes then you have a faulty caliper.

Either way, this will not be resolved by tightening the cable.  That will hurt cause the 'good' wheel to be locked on permanently.

Thanks, they’re disc brakes, so the caliper being faulty does make sense. But in that case, shouldn’t the regular braking test also fail on the back left side?

47 minutes ago, georgs said:

Thanks, they’re disc brakes, so the caliper being faulty does make sense. But in that case, shouldn’t the regular braking test also fail on the back left side?

No because the footbrake is hydraulic and the handbrake is operated via a screw mechanism inside the caliper.

Just make sure that the park brake operating lever on the caliper on the weak side is coming right back to its stop with the handbrake off.

Its not unknown for people to adjust the cable to try to improve the brakes, but this can mean that a caliper does not work correctly.

Be sure to chock the car safely before you get under it with the handbrake off!

Check for seized handbrake cables