How To Adjust Your Yanmar's Brakes

Adjusting your Yanmar tractor's brakes is an important maintenance and safety step that is often overlooked. Not only will properly adjusted brakes stop better but it is important that they are adjusted so that the left and right brakes stop evenly. If the left and right brake are not adjusted correctly you could easily lose control as one rear tire stops before the other. 

Your brakes should be adjusted so that each pedal has around 3/4" of free travel. Another words, you should be able to depress the pedal about 3/4" by hand. The pedals should also run out of free travel at the same height so that when the pedals are locked together, both sides stop evenly. 

To adjust the brakes you need to locate the left and right side turnbuckles under the tractor. Loosen the locking nuts and adjust the turnbuckles to get the correct free travel. Lengthening the rods will decrease the free travel and shortening them will increase the free travel. Once the pedals are adjusted, tighten the locking nuts to save your work. 

If you are unable to get down to 3/4" of free travel then your brake shoes might have excessive wear and might need to be replaced. We will cover that in a future article.