Vintage Minor Register

I just prepared two sets of shoes to send to Ian Harris for re-lining - for the fabric saloon and the McEvoy. One shoe has a badly mangled steel end cap. Here's Ian's reply:

"Yes I do this [relining] service. I’m currently having new steel ‘shoes’ made for the foot so the cam slides rather than jerks its way along the aging grooved foot. The tooling is being proved at present so I’ve only a few new steel shoes to date but will have about 1000 by the time Prescott is upon us. Incidentally, I’m having the current linings bonded to the shoes as the friction man pointed out that removing rivets from increasingly fragile aluminium shoes was asking to reduce the stock. My concern in bonding to aluminium was met with "it's good enough for Aston Martin so it should be OK on a Morris"."

Does anyone have an expanding reamer suitable for reaming the brake cam bushes in the backplates that I could borrow? Happy to pay return postage of course.

And I am in need of one more serviceable SV backplate and four SV brake cam levers to complete my braking system. I do have three good OHC backplates surplus if anyone is in need.

I had some brake linings bonded to alloy shoes. I didn't use them straight away and when I did I found they had all fallen off!
Rivets every time.

Ian

Ugh! I'll talk to Ian Harris, as I won't be using the McEvoy set for some time...

Ian,
With regard to the expanding reamer, this firm sell them so cheap it's not worth the hassle of posting back and forth a borrowed one.
www.rdgtools.co.uk

Philip

Thanks Philip. Simon Hodgins also put me on to an other similar company. Yup - its about time I owned one!

Just been in correspondence with Ian Harris, who tells me that he has commissioned a batch of Minor alloy brake shoe 'slippers', the steel caps that are fitted at the cam end of the shoes. He is currently proving a prototype set and the production units should be available in a few weeks. This will be a great help with our cable brake rebuilds.

If you have a need, you can contact Ian at ian@harris84.fsnet.co.uk. And don't forget that Ian also holds a massive stock of other new Minor spares.

Just had an e-mail from Ian Harris, and I replied - and my reply bounced with the error 'Boite du destinataire pleine'

This from a .co.uk e-mail address?!

Ah! I had the same problem this morning. I am after a set of brake shoe return springs. I shall try telephoning him later today.

Phone should work!

When you call him, perhaps you could relay the following for me?

"Thanks Ian, all understood. Will bring the shoe to Prescott.

Only change any slippers if they fail QA!

Good luck with the XXXXX collection. Should I take down the For Sale advert?"