Afternoon All,

I've read in one of the posts that the SVA station concerned would not accept the cable clamp method of securing the handbrake cable and also required documentary proof of the suitability of the cable nipples which had to be fitted.Does anyone know what the view of the SVA testers at Chadderton (Oldham) is since I was thinking of having my SVA test done there.

Hope someone can help.

Regards

David

I think that was only at Beverly and has been investigated and the inspector was told off for raising this as an issue when the original presentation (using clamps) shouldve been acceptable.

i had a lot of grief at Gosforth for using the cable clamp method (original cable was std sierra single cable affair that i cut in half and rejoined). The official line taken was that OEM's dont use clamps so he doesnt accept them. Fair point that Car OEM's dont use them but trailer / caravan manufacturers sometimes do.
My fix was to replace with Allegro twin cables with a piece of angle as the T'bar (see Mac1 section for pics). This wasnt infallible tho as the supplied U-brkts that the nippes located into were opening up! I had to nip them with mole grips and secure with jubilee clips to prevent further opening up that could have resulted in total handbrake failure - thats another story tho'!!.

To cut long story short - cut and clamp was method recommended by Mac#1 that passed many times. They took this up with lead inspector who has since 'had words' with Gosforth and i think all other stations to say the clamp method is acceptable for amateur built cars. You must fix 2 clamps on each side of the quadrant (4 in total). The first is the primary clamp, the second ones are the redundancy in case of failure of the first.

Id recommend a call to your local station just to clarify before taking any word as gospel. The individual station have a lot of lee way on interpretation. In my experiance i have found them very approacable pre-test to discuss things.