Coleman Outfitter 550 E Brake adjustment

[Alien10]

This is the E Brake, the one that is on the center drive shaft rotor below the dump bed. It is NOT related to any of the wheel disc brakes. 

A few months after purchasing my Coleman Outfitter 550 (Hisun) new,  the E brake stopped working.  Thought it had got water or oil on it as it gradually went from good holding to poor holding to literally NO holding.  Been lazy using a piece of 4x4 to keep from rolling, but that's a pain.   So, into the barn I went with work light to see what the heck is wrong. E brake pedal worked, but hit a hard stop and  felt like the cable was froze up from rust but that was not the case.  As it turns out the E brake is actuated by some kind of weird actuator lever/cam arrangement based upon the actuator lever being moved about 15 degrees from its fully released position. That makes the adjustment pretty critical with such little movement.  Bolt "C" in the pic below is the adjustment bolt, held in place by lock nut "B".  Working from below, here is what I did.

• Removed the skid plate below the E brake.   6 bolts and washers. 
• Next, looked at the brake pads which still had a good amount of pad left on them. Looked to be a little less than 1/8" each. 
• Verified that the cable from the E brake pedal "A" actuated the E brake arm "D".  Cable "A" pulls and released lever "D" in the direction of the curved arrow. 
• Applied E brake and checked the actuator arm, it was all the way up with no bare cable "A" showing. 
• Released E brake and checked the actuator arm, it was all the way down with bare cable "A" showing as in the pic below. That spring pulls the lever to fully released position.
• Note: I disconnected the release spring from at the lever with needle nosed pliers to make working with the adjustment easier to do without that pressure on the lever. 
• With E brake released, loosened lock nut "B" and backed it off the lever about 1/8" or so. 
• Tightened adjustment bolt "C" by hand just until it stopped. 
• Retightened lock nut "B".   E brake now holds securely on my hillside driveway, and releases completely. 
• Reinstalled skid plate. 

Hope this might be of some help to someone as none of this is in the owner's manual or in diagrams. 

 up.

Released brake and rechecked the actuator arm, it was all the way down.