Is this a trusted regular garage, it sounds to me like someone has been adjusting the handbrake cable up regularly instead of maintaining the rear drum brakes, pistons and adjusters correctly.

Binding brakes is a sign that it needs looking at properly, course it could be that things have got so bad it does need cables now, but just fitting new cables won't sort it permanently IMO.

Could the poor adjustment of the cable affect the foot brake then?

If overadjusted, then effectively the shoes are being artificially held close to the drum by those cables, instead of the auto adjsuters gradually working their way out to compensate for wear...similar effect in that the pistons don't have to move much to apply braking pressure, but it's not how they were designed to work, the auto adjusters should be doing this job.

Now your mech has done the job, the adjusters are presumably now doing their work, which they couldn't before because overadjusted cables wouldn't allow the shoes to retract enough to catch the next click on the auto adjuster, but now the shoes are not as close to the drums any more (no longer binding) so you are having to move more brake fluid to push the shoes out via the pistons, hence more pedal travel.

Does that make any sense at all, i've rewritten it twice and it still sounds like cobblers, probably is cobblers.

It could be that the brakes need bleeding out all round too, but i expect thats already been done by your mech..

edit, did he really just replace some seals or did he fit new slave cyls if the seals were leaking.

double edit...never fear the main dealer techs would have sprayed lots of brake cleaner in the general direction of the brakes..:-)

Edited by gordonbennet on 31/08/2014 at 22:25