Morris Minor Owners Club

gf

I suppose it could and perhaps a disc brake converted car??

pj

It seems there's no reason why a Minor backplate could not be modified to achieve the same safety advantage,

although you may as well fit the 9" drums rather than modify the 8" backplate. With a bit of patience you can pick up a set without spending a fortune, and when converted to Minor cylinders they are not more expensive to use.

although you may as well fit the 9" drums rather than modify the 8" backplate. With a bit of patience you can pick up a set without spending a fortune, and when converted to Minor cylinders they are not more expensive to use.

thats what I did. better braking, cheap cylinders and trunnions better too

Excuse the grunge but this is a 9" brake. You can see the 'trapping' of the lower trunnion.<br><br>

Wouldn't take much to weld a tab cut from angle below the trunnion on the back plate of the minor if your that worried about it dropping off, but to be honest it should never be allowed to get that bad.

but to be honest it should never be allowed to get that bad.

My thoughts exactly.

I wonder how it would feel and sound if the trunnion did let go .
I would hope it would rattle and bang so much that turning the radio up wouldn't drown the noise out.

hp

I wonder how it would feel and sound if the trunnion did let go

No warning, one minute you are gently turning into a parking space, the next you are sitting with one corner of the car on the ground and feeling pretty stupid

but I look at it this way:
You go to the shop for a backplate....one is standard, which wouldn't help with a trunnion escape, and the other is one guaranteed never to allow the 'worst case scenario' to happen.

Which one would you choose?

I think the price difference would be minimal.

Its all very well saying that but its not really a valid statement as the alternative is not available from your local spares specialist only occasionally off a scrap Wolseley and even then its not just a straight swap if you want to carry on using Moggie cylinders rather than the much dearer Wolseley ones, and at the end of the day it doesn't make up for bad maintainance in the first place as greasing joints is hardly expensive.

It also used to a problem on the old Comma vans that we used to have at work many years ago and they gave off a teletale clonk beforehand and if ignored did exactly the same thing.

I wonder how it would feel and sound if the trunnion did let go

on a Standard car - very embarrassing! Not an ideal thing to happen in a multi storey carpark just at the end of a ramp. Fortunately it doesn't take many othe rpeople to help move the car (so that they're not stuck behind you!!)
It was a hard lesson to learn for a skint young bloke who had replaced the trunnions for the previous MOT.

With a 9" drum, an experienced driver would be able to tell that 'something' was up - rather like wwhen an Eyebolt pulls out of a rotten chassis leg

What concerns me is that this mod is that it might be less safe.
The failure mode of the standard set up seems to be at low speed.
I can see a situation with this mod where the trunnion has failed but the car still drives more or less OK so the owner turns the radio up and gets used to what ever noises occur until there is a catastrophic failure that could happen at any speed.

Don't forget the chap whose shock absorber was held on with one loose bolt.