PROBLEM: Early handbrake lever swap to late

[Cruz]

handbrake works ok but the early handbrake lever has always seemed a bit crappy to me. I have to give it a good yank to get two clicks.

Can it be straight swapped for a 2nd hand late style lever?
Are there RHD and LHD versions like with the early lever?

Is it even worth doing? Surely they are better otherwise VW wouldn't have changed it

[faggie]

one of the best things i did to my early van , gets rid of all the slop , i am shure later handbrakes are the same left and right hand drive

[Cruz]

Great, thanks. Just contacted a seller who's listed one for a fiver

[Cruz]

one of the best things i did to my early van , gets rid of all the slop , i am shure later handbrakes are the same left and right hand drive

I take it it's just a case of removing the two bolts and the cable and then fitting the late lever?

[Cruz]

Firstly here's the late handbrake I want to fit

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn19 ... van018.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just gone out to do what I thought would be a simple swap but I can't see how the late handbrake lever will bolt to the floorpan. The bolts for the original early lever are right close to the seat box and there is no way the late lever will bolt in the same position.

I noticed on a picture posted up by Nij that there appears to be an extra plate that goes with it.

Is this for fitting the lever to RHD vans?

[1664]

If you mean the little sticky out plate at the bottom LHS that's the bit the switch is mounted on

[Cruz]

Thanks to Nij supplying me with some more pics it now seems that the area I thought was a mounting plate was a red herring and the floorpan is different on a late and early van.

So I either need to drill new holes for the late handbrake or make a plate to offset the hole positions

[richard17777]

Hi Cruz, how did you get on with fitting the late handbrake lever in the end?

My early lever has just about had it now. It looks like they are pre-disposed to developing slack and i can only find second hand ones which will probably soon develop the same problem.

Cheers,
Richard