Morris Minor Owners Club

Just had the MOT today and made a point of getting the brake test figures. I have aquired a Tapley brake tester and want to try it out for future reference before next years MOT. Does anyone have any intructions or know how the reading on the meter relates to the figures I got at the MOT?
Figures as follows:-
Service Brake
N/S O/S
Front
210 230
Rear
160 160

Parking Brake
170 180

Also what does a Balance figure of 100 mean?
Any help gratefully received as I am baffled.

find a quiet level road & sit the meter in the passenger footwell. unlock the scale so it moves freely then set it to 0 by rotating the guage on its pivot, lock the scale & drive at a steady 20 mph then brake sharply without skiding the scale will rotate & lock at the highest reading.
The figures given on the rollers should have been calculated against the weight of the vehicle but I cant remember if its done with the tapley meter or not

Tapley is not used now except in exceptional circs where the MOT place can't determine the eight of the vehicle. Seems odd from your figures above that the rear brakes make more force on the hand lever than on the foot !!! But main point is the balance is good - which of course Tapley won't tell you.

Mogwai wrote:find a quiet level road & sit the meter in the passenger footwell. unlock the scale so it moves freely then set it to 0 by rotating the guage on its pivot, lock the scale & drive at a steady 20 mph then brake sharply without skiding the scale will rotate & lock at the highest reading.
The figures given on the rollers should have been calculated against the weight of the vehicle but I cant remember if its done with the tapley meter or not

Thanks Mogwai, did just that and got a figure of between 55 and 60 on the scale so will use that as my reference in future.
I gave up trying to work out what the figures actually mean. As you say it seemes to be tied up with the weight, which I don't have a proper figure for.

bmcecosse wrote:Tapley is not used now except in exceptional circs where the MOT place can't determine the eight of the vehicle. Seems odd from your figures above that the rear brakes make more force on the hand lever than on the foot !!! But main point is the balance is good - which of course Tapley won't tell you.

Yes, I think those figures must be the wrong way round. I had brand new shoes fitted but even so I wouldn't expect the handbrake to be better than the foot brake. I can speak from experience about the ineffectiveness of the h/brake after losing the brakes going down hill recently.
Tapley meters are selling quite cheap on ebay. It wasn't until I adjusted up the brakes for the MOT that I realised how poor they had been. A qiuck test with the meter would have showed this up.

At the last mot on my other classic. I tested the foot brake and the hand brake prior to the test and both worked satisfactorily. I went for the test and was shocked to find that there was no braking response from the rear brakes when the pedal was pressed but they worked ok with handbrake. The reason was a collapsed rear flexible hose. The moral of my story a Tapley meter would not have found this fault.

The hand brake on the Minor is designed to be quite efficient due to the fact that the foot brake system is only of a single circuit design, where as modern cars with their dual circuit braking systems tend to be less demanding in the hand brake department. ie if a hydraulic circuit fails we still have a reasonable means of stopping with our hand brake but the modern vehicle should still have half a baking system left.

Well - compared to a modern car the Minor handbrake is not exactly spectacular! I find it hard to believe that hand action through the cable will give more braking than pushing really hard with the foot!! The handbrake can of course be made very efficient indeed - by fitting the larger 8" rear drums from a Wolsely 1500. This gives amazing ability for handbrake turns - essential in the past when competing in 'autotests'.