654 replies to this topic

[shyfd]

Might take you up on that. Was going to try total motor care in sandwich and see how they get on.....

[Alburglar]

Pm sent

[Alburglar]

I bled my brakes up today with the metro master cylinder fitted up and encountered some problems, because I had connected it up the wrong way. the brake pedal was rock hard but would only travel half way. The rear callipers were locked solid and the fronts were not biting.
It turns out the metro brake m/c is not actually as simple as being an equally split system (despite them being the same bore). It is a primary and secondary system. On a metro the primary system (the bottom outlet) provides fluid to all four corners. The secondary (top outlet) only provides extra fluid to the front callipers. - Which is why metro callipers have two connections! - I had the rears connected to the primary system and the fronts to the secondary, which caused my issues.

You also have to bleed both bottom pairs of pistons of each calliper at the same time, which I haven't done successfully yet.

I have swapped them over, for the time being, I will bleed them and see how they perform. If the secondary system does not cope well for the rears, I will have to connect them all via a four way (as I did when I had the mini m/c) and then the secondary can feed the second connector on the front metro callipers, as it should.

[blue blood]

With the brakes is there any way you could use a mini brake bias unit? Regards Blue

[Alburglar]

No it's not compatable at all in this case, because Mastercylinder is different and its disks not drums at the rear etc. Much better to be able to fine tune the rear brake effort to avoid loosing the rear end under hard braking.

[cptkirk]

Alburglar, have you got any more progress pictures to show us?

[jonny f]

Build looks great dude. Get some more pics up.

[ChopperHarris]

Interesting to read this, as I built the car originally and sprayed it Fiat Green. It was featured in Mini World/Mag just after I sold it (I had arranged the photo shoot but decided to let the new owner have the glory) Turned out he was a bit of an arse, I even caught him out at a Mini meet crowing to a crowd about how HE built it. He said when he bought it he wanted to upgrade the motor, shame he seems to have done so and lied to you about the specs.

Good luck with her, I hope he didnt mess with my build quality too much.

[blue blood]

Got any further with your build Al?

Regards Blue

[Alburglar]

Hi folks, I've been busy wih boring excuses (insert: having a baby/ doing up my house/ getting married excuses) but will be cracking on again soon.

Chopper, it was a long time ago now but I do remember him saying he built it, so that's interesting.
Progress to follow soon....