handbrake cable snapped, being hopeful

skipsmum

Hi, I'm being very hopeful here. My car (an 05 suzuki swift) was mot'd and serviced on Thursday. It cost £700 as the abs sensor rings had to be replaced.
On Monday my oh left it outside on a very slight incline. He left it in neutral (cue shouts of leave it in gear, I know).
The handbrake cable snapped and it toddled off down the road until it hit a van.
Its insured fully comp and is being dealt with, but I wondered how they test the handbrake for the mot, and if a 4 year old car should have this problem. It was recalled by suzuki in 2007 as there had been a problem with handbrakes.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far!

goldspanners

skipsmum wrote: »

Hi, I'm being very hopeful here. My car (an 05 suzuki swift) was mot'd and serviced on Thursday. It cost £700 as the abs sensor rings had to be replaced.
On Monday my oh left it outside on a very slight incline. He left it in neutral (cue shouts of leave it in gear, I know).
The handbrake cable snapped and it toddled off down the road until it hit a van.
Its insured fully comp and is being dealt with, but I wondered how they test the handbrake for the mot, and if a 4 year old car should have this problem. It was recalled by suzuki in 2007 as there had been a problem with handbrakes.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far!

for the MOT the rear wheels will be put onto rollers, the handbrake applied and then the rollers try to drive the wheels through the handbrake.
as for the abs sensor ring needing replaced at a cost of £700 was that a typo meaning only £70 ? i really hope so.

skipsmum

no, it wasnt a typo. £50 mot, £110 service, the rest was the abs sensor rings, which apparently are built into the drive shaft so the whole thing had to be replaced

anewman

I wouldn't expect a 4 year old handbrake cable to snap unless it was mistreat (the handbrake pulled up very tightly each time it was used). I wonder if there might be something to be gained from complaining to Suzuki.

Still, £630 for one driveshaft fitted seems very very expensive. Did you go to a Suzuki dealers for this work? You would have been better shopping around - hopefully it's a lesson learned as the jobs done now. I suspect if you always used Suzuki for servicing and owned the car from new this would be in your favour for getting them to do something about the handbrake cable, even if it is simply to replace it and not being involved with the consequential losses (that insurance are going to deal with).

goldspanners

skipsmum wrote: »

no, it wasnt a typo. £50 mot, £110 service, the rest was the abs sensor rings, which apparently are built into the drive shaft so the whole thing had to be replaced

thats a shocker there then, a quick google shows they seem fairly common things to corrode on your swift. bit of a poor idea having them as part of the drive shafts.

vaio

Apart from the obvious “leave it in gear” contribution I might to tempted to find if this is a common occurance and if so is it linked to the earlier recall.

If the problem was corrosion related and visible then there might be an argument it should have been spotted during the service. On the other hand if it was a hidden cable that broke then it couldn’t have been spotted earlier so it goes down as “cars break, fix it and move on”

skipsmum

thanks everyone for your input.
I have had it from new, and had all the services done at suzuki, so I will ee what they say.