Morris Minor Owners Club

I purchased a saloon that had the 1.5 Wolseley axle along with a 1275 and gear box, a mod made in the 70's

Sadly the car was beyond restoring so i removed the parts to put in my van.

Question... Should i put the entire axle in the van, or just remove the diff and put it in the minor axle?

Not 100% sure whether the half shafts are stronger in the Wolseley axle? or are they the same as the minor?

Are the brake much better, or much the same as the minor? Im running Discs on the front anyway, so maybe the rears being standard is okay?

Any help, advice or opinions welcomed

I fitted a complete Wolseley axle to my Minor in the 1970s. The only disadvantage was that the handbrake lever/mechanism hung down a bit - although it could probably have been modified. The halfshafts are exactly the same as far as I know. The brakes are bigger and a little better but could be fitted to the Minor axle with a little work. Probably easier to fit the Wolseley parts to the Minor axle on balance but would depend on the condition of the 2 axle casings probably.
Personally, I found the Minor too high geared with the 3.7:1 differential coupled with a 1275cc Midget engine and 165/80x14 tyres but there seems to be great demand for them. The car was much more driveable when I re-fitted a 4.22:1 and I think a good compromise would have been a 3.9:1. Of course it depends on your wheel/tyre combination as well as the sort of driving you do

When fitting the Wolseley 1500 rear brakes to the Minor axle casing they should be swopped side for side. That places the handbrake linkage in the right plane without any modification. Make sure that you have the right nipples and nuts on the ends of the rear axle brake pipes where they enter the brake cylinder as both nipple and nut are different to the Minor.
Fitting the Wolseley 1500 rear brakes to a Minor rear axle is a worthwhile modification especially if you have discs on the front as it helps to balance the front to rear brake ratio. I have the Wolseley 1500 rear brakes fitted to my Minor with Marina disc brakes on the front without servo.
The Wolseley and Minor half-shaft are one and the same item. I would suggest that the 3.9 ratio differential is the preferred ratio but your wheel and tyre overall diameter must be taken into consideration when making any calculations/decisions.

Thank you for your replies,

If i were to put the backplates and brake onto a minor axle... what advantage is this as opposed to just using the wolseley axle?

Also, the cylinders are at the rear of the axle... minor at the front? So would i need a longer handbrake cable? Or use the funky linkage from the wolseley axle?

I may well remove the 1.5 diff and replace it with a midget as im only running 1275 on standard minor wheels. I do like the idea of m minor having longer legs, but not if it goes the other way.

Edited to add... I understand about swopping the bakes, but would this not lead to incorrect shoe lead? so if the bigger brake is an advantage over minor brakes, would this not be lost in a incorrect setup... or am i incorrect? Also, i was told that i may only be again an extra 15% braking power from up graded rear brakes, seeing that most of the braking power is from the front anyway... opinions?

Thanks for all your advice

To me you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. If your axle casing is ok just fit the Wolseley brakes to the Minor axle but swop the brakes from side to side then you can use the existing Minor handbrake cables without any modifications.
The brake shoe lead is not effected as all you are doing in swopping the brakes side to side is transferring the lead shoe role to the other shoe. As the cylinder is floating the force/effort on the brake shoes is equalised. Whatever additional braking power is obtained it is an advantage to have.
I have had a variety of brake set ups on my Minor over the years and in my opinion the best balanced brakes I have ever had are as they are currently configured with the Marina disc set up on the front and the Wolseley 1500 8" brake set up on the rear.
The brakes on my Minor have had to work very hard over the years and they have never let me down or caused me any concern as to their effectiveness. The car will pull up very quickly with no hint of the rear wheels locking up or loosing surface grip and always stopping in a straight line.
Anyway it all works perfectly and I am more than happy with the set up.
As regards the diff - to fit the brakes you need to remove the half-shafts & hubs so an addition 40 minutes of work will see the diff changed.

Below is a drum off photo of the Wolseley 1500 brakes fitted to the rear axle of my Minor. To the right of the picture is forward.

Okay, well the situation im in is that i dont have a minor back axle i would need to buy one, and i already have an extended hand brake cable... so i could just use the wolseley axle i have and remove the handbrake gubbings, i wasnt sure if the wolseley axle was much heavier than a minor axle.

There is no real advantage of making all of this work for myself is the axle will just fit on, with little hassle... however, i can of course buy a minor axle

Thank you for your help, its give me a lot of good options

You could have made it clear right from the start that you did not have a Minor axle only the Wolseley axle - therefore the advice given (by me at least) in this thread would have been different.

Phil

philthehill wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 10:38 am You could have made it clear right from the start that you did not have a Minor axle only the Wolseley axle - therefore the advice given (by me at least) in this thread would have been different.

Phil

Pretty standard for the forums unfortunately, far too many people post questions without giving all the relevant detail.....

Sorry, but i wanted the best advice, my minor has been played around with, and if having a minor axle would be better for whatever reason, i shall buy one!

I didnt want advice based on my circumstances but based on what is the best set up!! Its relatively irrelevant whether i have a minor axle, its not difficult to get one!!

But i do really appreciate the feedback, as its good information, and seeing that the wolseley axle is not in the best of conditions, i now know i can put all parts onto a minor axle, so in fact the information give is very helpful

Thank you

[/quote]

Pretty standard for the forums unfortunately, far too many people post questions without giving all the relevant detail.....
[/quote]

This maybe due to the fact that when people give a full description, other give up reading, loose interest and dont respond... something i have personally experienced. So know ill be to the point and short and sweet

There's a fine balance between giving relevant detail and just rambling on with stuff that isn't...
Some get it right, some don't.
Also hindsight is a wonderful thing, it's always 20/20.

Who decides who has 'got it right' and who hasn't?
The forum police?

Philthehill, how is the Wolseley cylinder bled? Years ago I mounted later Midget rear brakes and also swapped the sides and mounted the cylinder on the bottom. This put the bleeder at the bottom. Some how I managed to bleed the cylinders. Recently I flipped the cylinders over which required filling in all the holes and redrilling since the mounting is not in the center. I was wonder how the Wolseley was done?

On the new subject, I tend to get to the point or question quickly and then fill in the information for those interested.

BTW, on this side of the Pond Wolseley 1500 are even rarer than Riley One Point Fives and at the time I didn't even know about them, so I wanted to upgrade to later Midget brakes if anything to match the discs.

Well, I wasn't sure whether you could interchange the brakes to a minor axle and didn't want to blabber and load of nonsense. So just a direct question.

My poor minor has been buggered about with, came with a ford axle that is now on something else, and had a zetec engine which has meant a lot of bodgery. I'm trying to put it back to something more original, but have the 1275 from another saloon I bought and had the brucey bonus of the wolseley back axle.... I know you can switch out the diff, but thought everything else was only for that wolseley axle.

I may pop the axle in that I have, but buy a minor one and change bits later.

I also wonder how they are bled when swopped over? And the moment everything is behind the axle but up top?

Thanks again, all interesting information

jaeki
Even though the Wolseley brakes are swopped side to side there is no problem with bleeding the brakes, they are bled in the normal way. All I can say is that I have never had a problem in bleeding the Wolseley 1500 rear brakes. In some ways it is easier than bleeding the Minor rear brakes.
Below you can see the hydraulic pipe run and if you look carefully you can see the bleed nipple. Phil

stuffedpike20 wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 12:29 pm Who decides who has 'got it right' and who hasn't?
The forum police?

this did make me chuckle...

Thanks, that's an easy bleed. You'll need new tires, there's not tread left.

stuffedpike20 wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 12:29 pm Who decides who has 'got it right' and who hasn't?
The forum police?

That's far too serious...
How about...
The person who "gets it right" gets the answer they require; the person who gets it wrong, gets the answer they deserve....

Anyway, enough of this, this topic is about back axles...

So people who can't express themselves very well 'get the answer they deserve'.

Not very nice. Not everyone is an engineer.

All questions should be welcomed. We are here to help people; not get exasperated.

stuffedpike20 wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 4:44 pm So people who can't express themselves very well 'get the answer they deserve'.

Not very nice. Not everyone is an engineer.

All questions should be welcomed. We are here to help people; not get exasperated.

this is why I don't go on the facebook groups anymore. there are far too many 'experts' out there. everyone thinks they know the answer when they clearly don't. I've been involved and owned these cars for 30 years or more. I don't know every answer, but if I need to ask, I come to these types of forums where people like Phil (the hill) DO know the answer and shouldn't need to question it.

its all fun though...