Never had trouble with the handbrake on the Series landrover but the one on the Defender has been a total PITA!

Being a 300tdi version the cable adjustment is in hell of a awful position unless you have double jointed snake arms or remove middle seat box panel. The drum frequently bungs up with crud and needs stripping down to clean. During the winter I had the whole thing freeze in a block of ice which immobilizes the truck until it can be released. Also I never did solve but for some reason if applying the handbrake whilst truck was on hill/underload it would go *bang* and release and need readjusting from scratch before it would work again. Not so funny when parked on a steep incline offroad and the truck suddenly runs away.

In less than 3 hours, I have removed the standard handbrake setup and replaced it with a X-BRAKE conversion kit. This is a mechanical disc brake conversion. Disk Transmission Brake uses a monster size mechanical caliper designed for agricultural vehicles and earth moving equipment.

Seeing that I have a PTO winch I had to get the PTO version of the x-brake which offsets the caliper out of the way of the PTO gubbings. As well as clearing the PTO port, there is also *just* enough clearance for the winch's lever rod to clear the x-brakes cable bracket.

The above image shows a hydraulic PTO pump, mine is a mechanic PTO as photo below...

Now the handbrake is firm at 3 clicks and hold truck steady for normal handbrake, and can be pulled up to 4 click for hill parking and winching.