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MG MGA - Brake Type Comparison

I have just taken my A for its voluntary MOT, which I passed. I have a couple of questions for fellow members.

1) I always note my brake test reading and this years they are pretty well the same as last year at: -

Front 234 253
Rear 189 185
Hand 183 176

My tester said these are good reading for car of its age.

Question.
My car has front drum brakes and I was wondering does anyone have a comparable sets of figures for disk braked cars of both types?

2) A minor query. With an MOT exempt car if you fail an MOT do you have to do a retest? I suspect the answer is no which I find somewhat illogical.

A final comment is I was amazed how near my handbrake reading is to the 'foot' rear brake. I bet this isn't the case for modern cars, or for that matter Twin Cams.

Paul
Paul Dean

Paul
I remember at my last "voluntary" MOT last October that my handbrake results were very close to the rear foot-brake readings.
Unfortunately I didn't think to get a copy of the actual results and so I can't quote actual figures.
I do know the MOT tester though and he may be able to let me have a copy of them, it would be good to compare.

I do know that I have never been able to properly balance the Rt and left braking at the rear though, one side comes on much quicker than the other.
Under light braking you don't really notice it but if you brake very hard you notice a bit of pull to one side from the rear until both sets of shoes are hard up against the drums, then the car brakes straight and true.

I have tried adjusting them up but both sides are at the point where one more click on the adjuster locks them up.

It would be interesting to hear any suggestions on fixing this.

I have even looked doing the MG TF disc brake conversion, not to improve the brakes, but to equalise the rear braking Rt to Lt.
I must admit that the idea of self adjusting rear brakes is quite tempting.

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

I couldn't get mine to balance at all, so I let a competent oldtimer workshop have a look. They balanced them and said that the cause was that the curve of the shoes and inner of the drums were not matched. I have not taken that side apart again to look at what they did, but I was surprised, having tried every permutation of swapping the pieces around in case it was just down to bad parts. The right rear side was always weaker than the left.
Dominic Clancy

+Despite the readings being very similar I usually try a handbrake stop in MOT prep and one side always locks first. Not surprising this year it was the left one.
Paul
Paul Dean

When I was in the process of fitting a new set of front pads (Mintex M1144 of course) I decided to fit a new set of discs at the same time so as to get the absolute best out of them. These pads turned out to be fantastic.

At about that time I had also noticed that the brake pedal was more solid after I had applied the handbrake, which suggested that maybe there was some wear and tear in the back brakes.

So I decided to fit a new set of rear brake shoes and also a new set of rear drums to see if this would improve things.

The pedal was vastly improved by this, it has none of the squishy feel it had before but I would still like to get the rear brakes to work together rather than one at a time.

Colyn

Colyn Firth

Paul

Going back to your original question (2), I would have thought that if the car had failed the MOT, you would at the very least, need to sort out the fault straight away, as it must be an offence to drive a car that is not road-worthy.
I am not sure whether or not you are compelled to have it retested, but it seems to me that without a retest, the current public record available to the insurance market and police, would be showing no update to the failure status of the car. So whether its legally required or not, it would make sense to have it retested and given a clean bill of health on the public record

Graham V

I agree Graham if you ignored the points of failure you would be unroadworthy. Hence you do need to fix but do you need to retest. One situation where this may arise is if a car is taken off the road after a failure and then rebuilt it may come back on road all sorted but still with its last MOT being FAIL.

All a bit hypothetical.

Paul
Paul Dean

I'm a tiddle confused--
If a car is MOT exempt, why do you take it in for a MOT in the first place
just wondering, is it a compulsory thing or owners choice
William Revit

Owner's choice.
Nigel Atkins

I have just not got around to applying for my cars MOT exemption and so, until I do, I still have to take my car for its MOT test.

To me, its quite a nice feeling to have your car pass its test and it is not such a bad thing either to have a qualified motor mechanic give it a once-over every now and then.

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

Colyn - Having read an article in this month's MGOC magazine you do not have to apply for MOT exemption, there is no process, as if you qualify you are exempt.
What it says is that what you do need to apply for is the tax exemption. On the otherhand we were already exempt under the old system and my renewal this year came through as 'historical' with no charge. On renewal doc it always says I need an MOT but it happily renews without one as was my case last year.

William - As Nigel says we can take car for voluntary test as I do. It is reassuring to get an annual independent assessment of the car, and it goes some way to saying the car is in the roadworthy condition we are legally obliged to make sure it if driving on roads.

Paul
Paul Dean

Paul
I have been lucky enough to have seen Colyn's car and it is certainly not a bog standard MGA. So I don't know if that means, as he has made changes to it, that he needs to apply for exemption.
All academic of course as it seems Colyn is happy to have the test regardless
Graham V

This thread was discussed between 11/06/2019 and 12/06/2019

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