Rear brake woes

[don58van]

Hello all

I am restoring the rear brakes on a project Minor. As you will see in my other posts below, I am encountering problems.
This post concerns the steel plates that sits under the rear cylinders and are spot welded to the backplate. On both rear backplates, this plate has been removed. I gather that a previous owner has fitted non-standard slave cylinders (that look very similar to the correct items) and this required the removal of the plates.
Does anyone know whether this was a known modification back in the day?
I assume the plates are there to ensure that there is a flat, smooth surface for the cylinder to slide up and down on. I doubt that they are there for extra strength because they are pretty insubstantial and only welded with two spots.
I am proceeding on the basis that I will fabricate and weld in replacement plates followed by installation of correct slave cylinders. Any comments on this?

Don

[philthehill]

Don
My understanding of the plates is that they were fitted to make up the correct thickness for the correct Minor wheel cylinder to operate/slide in. Without the plates the cylinder would be sloppy in the backplate. Other wheel cylinder may not require the plates to make up the required thickness. I do not know of a current or past modification but the additional plates may have been removed because the correct cylinders were not available at the time.
Phil

[don58van]

Thank you Phil for your info.

I have made a template to fabricate replacements that match the original parts.

Don