Morris Minor Owners Club

I had an issue with the modern linings on Wolselsy fronts..They can take a while to bed in. I would keep driving it and they will slowly get better. Need to do circa 250 miles I suspect t before they are bedded in

mowogg wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 6:38 pm I had an issue with the modern linings on Wolselsy fronts..They can take a while to bed in. I would keep driving it and they will slowly get better. Need to do circa 250 miles I suspect t before they are bedded in

Thank you. That's a lot more than I would have expected so I will persevere. I want to do about 500 miles so I can do the first engine oil change before the trip to France.

Stephen

I had done about 100 miles and I readjusted the front brakes. They are now excellent and far superior to the old 8" brakes.

I think the issue was that when I fitted the new shoes I had to back off 2 clicks or the shoes would bind for part of the rotation. On readjusting after 100 miles they will now not bind when backing off 1 click. I asked the workshop chaps at ESM about this because I was down there today for tracking and headlight beam adjustment. They said they take a file to any high spots on new brake shoes if they behave as mine did and they will adjust up perfectly right away. I should have done that!

The other very striking difference with a rebuilt engine was I did 90 miles today and used 2 gallons of petrol. That's more like it.

Stephen

I would take the high spots off the brake shoes as a matter of course way back. Even more important when you had to rivet the linings to the shoe. Back then there were very few bonded shoes available and they were not reliable as many a linings detached themselves from the shoe leading to brake failure.
Thankfully the glue for attaching the lining to the shoe has considerably improved leading to near non failure of the glue.
I also used to file down the leading edge of the lining to help bed them in.
I recently managed (for old times sake) to get the NU-TEXA special tool that I used way back for riveting brake linings to the shoe.
I have penchant for collecting old tools that I used to use in the BMC garage in the late 1960s early 1970s especially those Sykes Pickavant and Churchill special tools used for repairing the Morris Minor.

[quote=svenedin post_id=707105 time=1744504289 user_id=21995

So my early conclusion is that all those posts from BMCEcosse were basically a bit hyperbolic..........he went on an on about his Wolseley 1500 front brakes. Well I actually not only can compare but I have his brake parts. The very same. They are alright.........m'eh

it is very disappointing when it turn out that a long time contributor, sadly deceased, has not been entirely honest.


[/quote]

svenedin wrote: ↑Thu Apr 17, 2025 1:49 pm I had done about 100 miles and I readjusted the front brakes. They are now excellent and far superior to the old 8" brakes.

Apologies in order?

Yes an apology is in order. Roy was correct that the Wolseley brakes are very good so I am sorry I doubted you old chap and rest assured that your brakes are still going! I didn’t like the cheapskate use of TR7 shoes and I thought that was going too far to save a few pennies. I also do stand by being annoyed that Roy advocated using Minor cylinders in the Wolseley backplates but only years later admitted he didn’t think it was a good idea at all because it caused his rear brakes to lock too easily. He was going to go back to Wolseley cylinders but sadly never had time to do it.

Stephen

Just in case anybody is interested, PowerTrack Ltd will re-line shoes with Ferodo bonded linings. This is expensive at £22 +VAT per shoe but given the mileage most of us do, replacing brake shoes is a rare event. Ferodo/Mintex linings are regarded by many as being the best that were available but they are no longer available off the shelf so re-lining is the only option unless you can find rare NOS items. Contact at PowerTrack is Paul Hunt.

https://www.powertrackbrakes.co.uk

Stephen

I was running in the rebuilt engine and keeping an eye on the mileage because I was told to do an oil and filter change at 500 miles.

I have done about 550 miles on the Wolseley 9" front brakes. They improved a bit but continued to underwhelm.

I have just had the drums off. There was a lot of dust for only 550 miles of driving. I had to make a decision: a) go to France with the bedded in but underwhelming linings or b) change the shoes for the ones re-lined with Ferodo friction material BUT these will not be bedded in much at all before the trip.

I decided not really bedded in really excellent linings was the better option so I changed the shoes.

Just went for a gentle and careful short drive. The brakes are like night and day. So much better.

Moral of the story, don't buy unbranded generic brake shoes. I didn't think they'd be quite so bad! They really are awful. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that Wolseley 9" brakes with unbranded shoes were no better and perhaps slightly worse than standard Minor 8" brakes with Mintex shoes.


Stephen

That's great news. I must admit I was very pleased with the improvement the Wolseley brakes made to my car - which only had 7" brakes previously - but don't ask me what make of linings I had. It was a long time ago! I'm sure you'll feel much more confident driving with better brakes on a long run.

ManyMinors wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 8:03 pm That's great news. I must admit I was very pleased with the improvement the Wolseley brakes made to my car - which only had 7" brakes previously - but don't ask me what make of linings I had. It was a long time ago! I'm sure you'll feel much more confident driving with better brakes on a long run.

Thank you. In those days you could get quality linings easily and 7" to 9" must have been an incredible improvement!

Stephen

Just back from another drive and I just cannot overstate the difference high quality friction linings make. Decades ago, I was told by a mechanic as a young man to always buy the best brake shoes. In those days they were Mintex/Ferodo. I never thought the brakes were that bad on a late Minor (8" front) and I wondered why the cars had such a reputation for dreadful brakes. Part of that I thought was the earlier 7" brakes all round cars and poor maintenance because at that time Minors were not so much "classic cars" as old bangers. I now realise that the friction material had a great deal to do with me thinking that Minor brakes were basically not that bad. My car was always fine but many others would not have been. Fortunately, I have a stash of Ferodo shoes for the back that will probably see me out! The fronts, now Wolseley I will just have to get re-lined. I am going to send the rubbish shoes off to be re-lined in due course so that I have a spare set. They last ages but sometimes they get ruined if a cylinder leaks.

Stephen