been convered on here before, but I have made an ally cover that boxes in my balance bar, so there is no way to tell whether it is pinned or not (because I have no desire to drill a hole in what is already a small bit of bar for the force it may have to transmit)

anybody else done it this way?

no personal experience, but how is the cover secured? If it was riveted in place then that should count as being permanently fixed and preventing adjustment of the bar? The just drill it out when your done with SVA.

Just do what I did. Drill a hole through a nut, pass a split/roll pin through. Cut out the centre of the pin and put it on the balance bar.
Looks like its locked and there is no hole in the balance bar !

Brooky,

check your u2u box.

If checking the balance bar is pinned is a requirement of the test the inspector can make you remove the cover to complete the test. If cover is not removable he can fail the car and ask you to re-present it with cover removed.
I have to say the idea of pinning a bias pedal box is beyond me. Defeats the purpose of having one.

If i hadnt taken pictures of my handbrake assy inside the tranny tunnel covers he was going to ask me to take the covers off. My assy was no good anyway and he said when i bring car back i had to show him - not just photos.

[Edited on 25/9/06 by DarrenW]

Not that I have particular experience with this, but my understanding is that the reason for pinning the balance bar is to prevent it from being adjusted.

You don't have to pin it for SVA, but they will then test the brakes with the balance bar at both end of the adjustment range. Most would fail if this were the case, hence pinning at a suitable point in the range.

I would have thought that effectively permenantly boxing the adjustment in means that it is then not adjustable, so should be as good as pinning.

However, I guess its another of those "open to interpretation" things.

Mike

quote:

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Originally posted by Brooky
Just do what I did. Drill a hole through a nut, pass a split/roll pin through. Cut out the centre of the pin and put it on the balance bar.
Looks like its locked and there is no hole in the balance bar !

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yea cover is rivetted on (well cleco'd until setup properly on a brake tester)

Darren - my handbrake assembly is boxed in inside a rivetted section, drill job to get at but no room for any sort of bolt so it will have to do.

think I'll just go fot it and see. hasten to add the balance bar will have a locknut, but no pins.

Nat - ref handbrake my photos worked a treat on first test, so good that he could see he wasnt happy with how i connected the cables so failed it!!! It was the retest he wanted to see it for real so i couldnt take pics of someone elses! (at least thats my guess). Sometimes this area is visible enough when car is up in the air by shining torch in from the diff end. Some testers are more picky than others.


Ref pedal box, interesting comments. I like the one about the box that prevents adjustment. Im not experienced in this type of box, can they move themselves in use over time or are they static once set? Im wondering if this is why they want to see them pinned. When boxed in is it obvious that they are still a twin cylinder set up (ill guess the answer is yes due to cylinders and plumbing etc). Might be a good idea to call your local centre for clarification. Surely pinning is just one of the potential solutions, maybe you have an alternative idea with lock nuts etc.

All I did was use two half nuts either end of the bar which were pinned. I also put two half nuts on the longest side of the thread, inside of the pinned nut.
This meant I still had adjustment but it could be locked off by turning the nuts against each other.
The tester just took a brief look to find the pins and did a brake test. He didn't ask me to undo the nuts or adjust the bar.
It passed.

Its not an automatic fail if the bar is not locked, they just test it to the extreems of the adjustment. Which means it proabably will fail.

So if you wanted to maintain adjustment , as long as it passed at both eds it would be ok.

Not much help really, but there you go

I know that the Gillingham test centre passes them without any problems - no pins or locknuts needed. I guess it depends on the tester.