Getting on in years, the owner of this 2003 Mk IV VW Golf was having increasingly difficulty pulling up the handbrake, and was thinking this was just down to his age and he was now losing his strength. When I got in the motor and tried pulling the handbrake up I reassured him that the problem wasn’t his strength, but a very sticky handbrake cable.

The Golf has two cables one for each side and it is of course advisable to replace both, this will not only ensure that the handbrake pulls up evenly, but also that the other side won’t also fail in a couple of months’ time.

The job should be quite straight forward and once the centre console is removed, the handbrake end of the cables is easily accessible. The problem on this one is normally getting the outer cable detached from the tube guiding the inner cables that runs from the back of the vehicle to the handbrake.

The nylon end of the cable can take quite a bit or persuasion to come away from the aluminium tube.

You can download this story as a PDF, as well as other technical tips at TechTips.ie.

There are lots more Tech Tips to view, and they are all searchable, on TechTips.ie.