brake advice

Bought our designer just before christmas and we seemed to have a bargain, and after checking it out it does seem to be as described new ply, hub bearings, electrics 240 and 12v
The only area that I am struggling with are the brakes. They work well going forward and the auto reverse works but the handbrake only stops forward movement and had no effect stopping it going backwards.
I have started at the drums and they adjusted up quite a lot. This I put down to the fact that the last owner used an old type mini to pull it, and as we all know the old mini brakes were not the best so the dandy would have been doing most of the work.
All the cable adjustment is as it should be and the handbrake is now only moving by 3 or 4 clicks before it is hard on, but there is still some backward movement possible.
The only thing I can think is the linings may be due for renewal. or is the backward movement normal!
Any thoughts from the more experienced owners, thanks in advance  

I think the brakes will be dodgy going backwards down hill. I would always chock before unhitching as the trailer will very likely run away. TowItch may know more as he seems to have studied the inner workings of dandy brakes. If you ever want an after dinner speaker, he assures us he could keep you enthralled for 2 hours on the subject of dandy brakes but no-ones ever stayed awake long enough to verify this.

Thank you Navver, This is what I am thinking, no good keeping playing with them if this is the way they are designed.
Trouble is our drive is soo steep (we do live on a cliff edge) The wife is not confident enough to reverse down it with a trailer.
The answer looks like rolling it down foward, then spinning it round and having some wheel chocks to rest it against. As long as it stops when needed on the road I can live with that.

Sorry to be so slow back to you on this.

One of the bad this about this site is usually one of the better things about it. We were(are) not great at indexing and filing information but as a consequence you tend to get as personal reply with the information tailored to your needs.
I might have been your source of information on brakes but my brain (or what passes for one) has been a bit fried as of recent. Coming to your post I was trying to remember things that I had known but were not in my head at that point. This isn't unusual as I've got the memory of a goldfish. What was unusual was not being able to find the information I wanted in previous posts.
I have finally found some of the reasons why I couldn't locate the information I wanted.
I'll try to post more later tonight but do please hold on urbtaf, we do have more information for you.

Thanks Tow Itch, I have found the manuals for the brakes that lurk in other posts, and my brakes are all set up as they should be, the only thought I have is the power storage spring thing, (which I have not come across before). Your thoughts will be gratefully recieved.

urbtaf wrote:Thanks Tow Itch, I have found the manuals for the brakes that lurk in other posts, and my brakes are all set up as they should be, the only thought I have is the power storage spring thing, (which I have not come across before). Your thoughts will be gratefully recieved.

The power storage thing, is a large spring which puts tension on the handbrake rod / cable to stop the auto reverse working and keeping the brake shoes on when the handbrake is engaged. Or that is how we think it works anyway. You might not be able to see it as a spring as it is encased inside a tube, well this one is. This one isn't on a Dandy but another type of trailer we have here, our 6 is tucked up in our warehouse at the moment but if you want pics of that we can oblige some time.

Thinking about it some of these might not even have a spring, but work using a piece of solid rubber.  

Hope this helps.  

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]