Morris Minor Owners Club

my 8" brakes on the mog are being a pain! the right hand one sometimes behaves but about half the time its grabbing quite bad, if im not careful i can lock it up without much pedal pressure. sometimes it pulls to the left and feels like the right brake isnt working. the rest of the time it works perfect. it was getting to the stage it was grabbing very bad so i went around the block speeding up then doing emergency stops (from about 30mph) and i did about 10 of these. got the brakes good and hot! it made them behave for about a month after that

i have another issue, i cant find the key for the wheel nuts! it will be around somewhere but i cant really fix anything untill i find it.

PM sent about the wheel nut key.

In terms of brakes the only thing I can think of is that one of the cylinders is sticking, but that seems kinda counter inutitive. Either that or the shoe has kinda stuck to the drum, but that should free off when the wheel spins

Contaminated brake linings? Brake fluid on shoes can give strange effects, and a series of hard brake applications can burn it off temporarily.

Other possibilities: missing steady pins, allowing the shoes to tilt? Incorrectly positioned pulloff springs, again allowing tilting and wedging? Both depending on how well the modification to 8" has been done, perhaps.

Are the brakes unusually noisy? I've rescued chunks of broken pull-off springs from inside brake drums.

A traditional cure for snatching was to file a chamfer on the leading edges of the linings.

Don't assume that only one brake may be faulty - have all the drums off and check them all.

Kevin

Yep - does sound like you need to get the drums off and investigate urgently. As above - brake fluid or broken springs, but also maybe the lining has become glazed and the best answer is probably to fit a new set of shoes, and check all 4 wheel cylinders are moving easily and not leaking. The parts cost very little - and thw eork could prevent a nasty accident. Unless you have special 'locking' wheel nuts on the car - a socket will undo them !
Pulling to one side means the brake on the other side is not working - perhaps your hard applications freed them off for a while. Brakes are safety critical - so I suggest urgent investigations!

Other possibilities: missing steady pins, allowing the shoes to tilt?

I've had 15 Minors so far, and only the really really rotten one had the beehive springs. The other 14 never had braking problems caused by that.

My Trabbi had locking up problems last year - shoes and drums looked fine. The drum wasn't oval and all the springs were good.
Filing a chamfer worked for a couple of months but when the problem came back I got bored with messing about and replaced shoes and drums!
The problem with locking up was that it made it very very hard to stop in the wet! I replaced the front tyres the year earlier when I got it on the road as the old tyres were not grippy and this helped the tendency to lock up.
The problem was that sometimes if I approached a roundabout a bit fast hoping to get a gap and then had to stop late, people glare at you when you skid along! I would have ignored it but when you lock up in the wet, there's nearly no brakes at all, and I'd rather not gamble with other people's safety.

Brakes are safety critical - so I suggest urgent investigations!

Brakes are life savers - and not just your own!