Morris Minor Owners Club

Joe doesn't like going backwards. He shudders. Now my first thought was the rear brakes but as previously mentioned he also has a serious vibration at 60 - 70mph. Could this be something like a engine mount or gearbox steady cable problem?
Any other ideas?

It could be, engine mount's a popular one for vibration as is gearbox steady.

If neither, then probably oil contamination on the clutch; which seems to be a fairly common problem with minors...

I reckon most cars would shudder going at 60-70 in reverse.

D'oh.
Well I did write 'also'

This isn't meant as a joke by the way it is for real.

I have been fine tuning my Minor since the rebuild over the last
ten or so years and have never been able to eliminate the judder
in reverse! I regard it as 'part of the Minor experience' and no
amount of fiddling with the drive train, engine steady,or anything
else has really eliminated it. I think it would take a re-design of
the engine and gearbox mountings to remove this problem.

Yes, I'd agree with Willie. There seems to be some 'judder prone' cars and some that are not.

Having said that, mine used to judder terribly in reverse and bottom gear the the reason was that the clutch cover was not being opened evenly due to a slighly off centre thrust bearing. This was cured and the judder completely disappeared! Oh and also, while I was at it, I replaced the little phosphor bronze bearing which sits in the end of the crank and has the gearbox input shaft's nose resting in it. If your input shaft has any play in it and you have no bronze bearing then that could add to the judder too.

I was amazed at the difference that an evenly thrown thrust bearing had. Yet, if you had asked me beforehand I would have said that it would probably make very little difference, but it did!

Can you may remember this engine is a 1300 from the scrapped convertible in Southampton. It does have a tiny leak from the rear of the engine but only when it is running. Would the symptom you describe create a judder at a specific speed range or specific rev range? Also this is a new problem. It ran for a 100 miles or so (mostly forwards I might add - for you comedians out there ) without the reverse judder occuring. Before the engine swap there was no problem at speed or in reverse.

My juddering only occured when taking up drive in bottom gear and reverse. At speed it was perfectly fine.

If you are getting oil contamination on your clutch plate through the 'leak' then this might also be causing the judder...

Maybe it's oil related then if it has only just started to occur?

Is it BAD or just annoying?

annoying - and a bit more fodder for the wifes 'waste of money cannon'
That sort of thing won't do the clutch any good regardless of the source of the problem. It doesn't happen in first gear so i wonder if it's caused by the brakes catching as the drum counter rotates or maybe the (increased 1300) torque reaction dragging the prop/gearbox/engine down - I mean what stops this anyway?