Why do people seem to think it is harder to stop a 1430 from 100km/hr to 0km/hr than it is to stop an 850 even from 100km/hr to 0km/hr. Unless you brake with the clutch out and your foot on the accerator then I can't see why drums and a 1430 is inheritly dangerous (OK putting on flame proof suit) now let me explain a bit....
to me brakes are responsible for slowing wieght. a 1430 weighs about the same as most other versions of a mini. This is not saying that I don't think a 1430 requires disks I think it does. The driver is expecting / wanting to drive it in a spirited manner and will accelerate quicker and so will more readily need to slow down which is where drum brakes fall down ie brake fade.
BUT If you are temporily driving with drums on a 1430 and do not push the drums to the limit of thier braking abilities then why are drums on a 1430 inheritly unsafe?????
By the way IMO you don't need a 1430 to push drums beyond thier limits you could probably do this easily with an 850 just go down a hill riding your brakes the whole way your drums would heat up cook themselves and when you got to the bottom you'd have no brakes.
You could kill yourself doing the same thing with disks as well
Also a 1430 will give a bit of an engine breaking advantage in that more gas is inducted and therefore more gas is compressed by the engine requiring more power. So with your foot of the go pedal you will have more engine breaking so there will be marginly less load on your brakes.
the fact that disks seem standard with an engine 1275 or above is a symtom of it being standard on the cooper S (which would be expected to be driven harder than a more standard mini) I reckon that after the S had disks every other 1275 version had to have them. This is also a symtom of rego requirements in that to avoid having to get a engineers certificate for an engine upgrade for a 998 block to a 1275 block you need to be at specifacations comparible to a mini version that had a 1275 as they all had disk brakes then you need disk brakes.
I don't know but an engineer might be able to pass a 1275 with drums my father who incidently was an RTA registered inspector could see no reason that my 1275 should nessicarily have to fail with just drums (I got disks because like many here I anticipate driving my mini in a spirited manner(but not unsafe) and don't want to worry about brake fade I also didn't really want to have rego / insurance hassles)
Sorry for the rant but it is not nice to call each other idiots I mean I wasn't nessicarily even sure the 1430 was in the car at the time (I realized it was because of the thread on extractors) and yes I agree dodgy brakes and steering racks should be fixed ASAP on whatever car.
Sorry again for the rant
). But if yours doesn't work well then it isn't anything to do with having discs or not...
) so I will copy that.