Brakes

While the entire family loved driving the Morgan before I started the restore, nobody would have claimed that they liked the brakes. It is not the lack of an ABS – it is the lack of a servo combined (as I know now) with a broken rear slave cylinder and the rather small surface of the front disc brake calipers pads.

On my MGB GT I fitted new Mintex brake pads, exchanged the rear slave cylinders and added a remote servo to somehow handle the approx.120BHP+ that the car has after the engine rebuild. Adding a remote servo on an early MGB with a single brake line system is not too hard.

Initially I wanted to fit a servo on the Morgan as well. We intend to drive the car quite a bit. I don’t mind modifications that make it more enjoyable / improve the handling and usability. However, the Morgan has a Girling dual line master brake cylinder and a dual line remote servo is harder to find. In a chat Tim Ayres from NewElms recommended to get the HiSpec 4 pot calipers instead and so I did.

The rear slave cylinders got early attention as I changed my approach on cleaning and repairing parts during the project. When I started the project, I disassembled and then just documented which part is stored in which bin. Almost at the end of this phase, I change this. Cleaning, inspecting parts and sourcing spares if necessary, before putting them in storage. Since I noticed that both Girling rear slave cylinders are leaking – I ordered a service kit for part parts right away: Rear Wheel Cylinder Seal Kit (pastparts.co.uk)

I have used a service kit for the rear slave cylinders of my mini before and that was an easy job. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get the seized pistons out and I eventually gave up. After a hint from somebody on the Talkmorgan forum I ordered two new ones from ebay: 2 x Rear Wheel Cylinder For Austin A60 Riley 4/72 Morris Oxford Morgan GWC1104 | eBay

For the master brake cylinder I ordered a kit from Melvyn Rutter. But as this item had a long delivery time I decided to see if I could find this somewhere else. Searching for Girling 74470134 service kits I somehow ended up on the European Spitfire Forum: Hauptbremszylinder 1500er Girling überholen – Europäisches Spitfireforum (spitfire-forum.eu)
The older article there said that the service kit for the GMC226 is identical. Having a Rimmer Bros. account I ordered the repair kit AAU2850 straight away.

Most likely everyone that restores a classic British car knows the situation/feeling. You have an issue, you search and hopefully find a vendor in the UK, you anxiously wait for the delivery, you open the package with full excitement – just to realize that the spare part looks different or is completely wrong. This is exactly the case with the AU2850 kit. Some of the seals look differently (actually all but most of them a close enough). Since a few TalkMorgan forum member suggested to contact PowerTrack Ltd in the UK. I pretty much got the same GMC226 kit with one additional seal for the fluid reservoir lid.

Getting the secondary piston out of the Girling was a bit tricky because I didn’t have a compressor at hand. I used a magnet attached to a pen and was able to pull it out very slowly. Afterwards I cleaned all parts in a new Ultrasonic cleaner I bought. I cut some 120 grid sanding paper into small strips and taped them as flaps to a wooden stick that was slightly smaller as the bore of the Girling. A few turns with the battery powered drill cleared the surface rust insight. Putting the new seals in and everything back together was a simple task.

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