Morris Minor Owners Club

Not the first by any means - my Rally Minor had Wolseley drums front and rear 66/67 - and additional teledampers front and rear, as well as the original lever dampers filled with EP90... I knew better than to fit antiroll bar, the car having plenty of understeer already - but it did have negative camber ......

Bbc,I'm sure you know what you mean but It's like Chinese to me!

Sorry, meant ' mc', one finger typing still carp!

'Bmc'!

Yes it's coming back to me. He wanted Riley drums up front (I take it they are bigger diam or wider) but Wolesley was all he could get at the breakers. And he could not have been the first with that mod. because now I recall somebody told him about it. I do remember he kept the stock lever arms damper units in situ. OK, so he was the first in a cast of thousnads before him Sorry the memory is getting hazy.

I would love to see that car now.

Now I think about it, I'm sure sometime in the mid 70s a magazine had a mini-feature on the Riley/Wolesley drum conversion.

The riley 1.5 front brakes are a larger dia at 9" and the brake shoes are very wide.
I had Riley 1.5 brakes on the front of my Minor back in the 1970s. Very good they were too. But the drums were very heavy which increased the un-sprung weight.
They were superseded by the Morris Marina disc brake set up. The Minor now has the Wolseley 1500 8" rear brakes fitted and they provide a nice balanced braking with the disc brake set up. No servo is fitted as I like to feel the brake feed back through the pedal.
The front brake conversion is easy to do - near enough a bolt on job.
The Wolseley rear brakes require the back plates to be swopped from side to side to match up with the minor handbrake cables. Again a near bolt on job.
The metal brake pipes need to have the right form of nipple on their ends and the correct nut.

Phil aren't the cylinders really expensive and hard to get hold of now ??

New Riley 1.5 brake wheel cylinders are expensive and hard to come by but here is a link to what appears to be useable wheels cylinders with a Girling overhaul kit:-

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1958-1965-RI ... SwUeBdvam1

Wheel cylinder repair kits are available from 'e' bay.

The one reoccurring problem I had with the Riley 1.5 front brakes fitted to my Minor was that the adjusters easily became slack in the back plate and the back plate then had to be replaced as there were no adjuster repair kits back then, thankfully there was a plentiful supply of S/H backplates available from my local scrap yard. NOS adjuster repair kits are now available from 'e' bay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Austin-A55-A ... SwHZhbP4rR

Below are photos of the Riley 1.5 front brake set up:-

CAR 734B is still out there.

Hi,
So what was the outcome of this? Did you get to see your dad's old traveller again?
Best wishes,
Mike.

Hi,
So what was the outcome of this? Did you get to see your dad's old traveller again?
Best wishes,
Mike.

Sniff, seems CAR 734B remains elusive. Sob;)

Sniff, seems CAR 734B remains elusive. Sob;)

Did the club office pass on your details to the current owner?
(If you didn't before) It could do no harm to ring them again, get them to recontact the current owner and ask them to let you have first refusal, if and when they decide to part with it.
It would also give you the opportunity to touch base and update your contact details with them, if neccessary.
Best wishes,
Mike.

Don't come on here too often, as at the start of this thread I'm here to trace CAR734B. I've pix of it in the 60s and 70s here. It's still out there. One of you has it, I will speak to the club again.



CAR734B. Will see it one day... one day...

Have you tried asking on the various facebook groups, not only for Minors, but Classic Cars in general?