handbrake

[Steve Clare]

Hi
I have a full morris minor hydraulic system on my special.
It's fairly straightforward apart from the handbrake. There's no brake cross shaft on the chassis, I just have a handbrake lever and pawl, which is a ruby type.
Has anyone fabricated a handbrake mechanism for a hydraulic system? I seem to remember from owning a Moggy Minor years ago that there was a pivot arrangement on the back axle?
Any advice very welcome!

[JonE]

i asked this on the 'fettling a special' thread and the reply was that the hydraulic must be a different system from the main system. So my handbrake-porn viewing of those lovely little rally hydraulic handbrake was dashed... doesn't compute for the fact that we already have mechanical levers in place?

[Charles P]

Hi
I have a full morris minor hydraulic system on my special.
It's fairly straightforward apart from the handbrake. There's no brake cross shaft on the chassis, I just have a handbrake lever and pawl, which is a ruby type.
Has anyone fabricated a handbrake mechanism for a hydraulic system? I seem to remember from owning a Moggy Minor years ago that there was a pivot arrangement on the back axle?
Any advice very welcome!

I fitted an early uncoupled type handbrake, mounted back to front and pulling on a balance bar using Morris Minor van handbrake cables with clamps on the side tubes to hold the cable outers.
Works well but does rely on the early 3 speed gearbox mounting point to hold the ratchet, which may require creativity to arrange with a later box.  

Charles

[Howard Wright]

Hi Steve

Here are a couple of pics from my old special.  Hope they help?

Cheers

Howard

[Steve Clare]

Howard, 
These are very useful indeed thanks- I've got the idea now.

[Zetomagneto]

Well said Charles and Howard, good photos too!

[Stuart Giles]

Here's the single cable handbrake setup on my special. It's been on there since the car was converted to hydraulic brakes in the mid 60s. I've always thought that the open cable from the compensator to the driver's side backplate brake lever could usefully be replaced by a rod and two clevis joints -another one of those round tuit jobs that most specials have....

[Ian Williams]

Some pretty substantial and extensive metal work locating that back axe Stuart, what do you use the car for?

[Stuart Giles]

Some pretty substantial and extensive metal work locating that back axe Stuart, what do you use the car for?

Well, my special was built to be used as a trials car in the late 50s. So, it has cambered springs as you'd expect. Despite this handicap, I decided to use the car in hill climb and sprint events anyway. The Panhard rods I fitted on the front and the rear along with the antiroll bar fitted to the rear axle improved the cornering no end; you can see the stress on the rear tyre in this photo of the car at the Lydden race circuit.

[Ian Williams]

It was the anti roll bar that I was most interested to see, obviously works!