Hi all. Just bought a Mini. Great little car.

My brake pedal seems quite low? It moves down a fair way before the car starts slowing. Is this normal?

A friend adjusted the brake drums for me but this made no difference to the pedal.

Can anyone help with a suggestion please?

Brakes aren't adjusted properly, if you have a low pedal. You may also find you need need brake shoes. As it is a new car to you, i would say it is most certainly needing new shoes. Buy a set for all round, fit them, or have them fitted and adjusted. And it wouldn't hurt to bleed the brakes, god knows how long ago this was done. By bleeding the brakes you will also soon find out if the wheel cylinders are seized as well. Good chance this is the case. All this in parts would be about $200 plus labour. Thats pretty well the worse case senairo. But they are your brakes, it is what stops you from killing yourself and others. Best sort them out ASAP.

Cheers
Aaron

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Just to add to what Aaron said.
its fairly easy to jack up a corner and knock the brake drums off to see what the brake shoes are like.

To do it - take the wheel off and you will see two large phillips head screws in the brake drum. Remove these and then undo the brake adjustment so that the shoes dont bind on the drum. Give the drums a couple pf whacks with a hammer. Brute force is not needed, its just to get the drums moving. Then just slide the drum off the hub.

Have a look at the shoes - you can quickly tell if they are fairly well worn - they should have about 5 mm of material on them. Also look at the dust in the hub area. if its just dust then brush it off (but wear a mask as it may be abestose dust). If you see a wet paste of dust then you have a leaking wheel cylinder that will need attention.

Clean the drum of dust and slip it back onto the hub. Replace the two large phillips heads screws and re-adjust the brakes. The brakes are properly adjusted when the wheel is locked solid (cant turn) and then backed off one full flat. You then have to do that to each of the wheels to check each for wear and a leakage,

When you adjust the wheels, each wheel has to have the same adjustment otherwise you will uneven braking with possible disasterous results.

This would probably make the car pull to one side when braking, so its unlikely that they are seized.

You may also want to check the brake hoses, but this is also likely to make the car pull to one side under braking and will probably become apparent when bleeding.

There are instructions for adjusting brakes here:

http://drcwww.kub.nl/~bogaard/manual/routine/11.htm

Also, see this thread for more details on bleeding the brakes:

http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21350

in my case when I fist got the deluxe, the rear brake lines were both blocked, no fluid at all was getting through!

Then 6 months later (car only driven 200 miles, testing mostly) the front wheel cylinder spat all the fluid out in a puddle.... naughty boy!

Drums were out of round on the front, and shoes were all but gone, it is lucky she stopped at all.

New discs, new rear drums and shoes, new brake lines all round and robert is your mother's brother!

Don't take chances with your brakes!

Hi,

I had this fixed a while ago. I had a friend look at it and he said the rear cylinders were seized and leaking. He replaced them both and bled the brakes and it is quite amazing how well they stop this car.

Thank you for the suggestions. Helpfull people.