The notorious braking efficiency of the Austin Seven is often caused by the owner. This may seem a harsh statement, however, it is mostly true.

Over the years the Austin chassis has taken a terrible beating and parts have worn without replacement. The brake shaft is in the most inhospitable area of the Seven and is probably the least maintained item on the car. Lord Austin or his design engineer was very astute as to the workings of the layman and to this end used very thin zinc loaded bearings to support the cross shaft. This had two advantages, first that the bearing required very little maintenance and the other was that even if the bearing did collapse, the difference in shaft movement was minimized. Thus you would still have some braking. To this end I offer my quick - and usually successful - method to counteract wear on the braking system of the Seven.

The method used is as follows:

1. Raise the car as level as possible so that all four wheels are clear of the ground and axle stands/chocks are stable.

2. Uncouple the front brakes below the handbrake. This also allows a full examination of the cables. Recently I inspected a car and the brake cables looked in order, however, on releasing the tension it was found that several of the inner cores had broken around the area of the brake quadrant. This is also the case of the rear brakes especially if the dreaded cable adjuster is employed. Please do not use these unless absolutely the last resort.

3. Fully release the foot brake adjustment until it has no effect on the rear brakes.

4. Remove all four wheels and brake drums.

5. Check for any hubs that are leaking oil and rectify immediately. This system of adjustment cannot improve the braking effort of oil soaked linings.

6. Check the conditions of the hubs and associated braking parts. If not excessively worn then remove all the dust and lightly grease all the moving parts. Don't forget to give the brake linings a light rub with coarse emery or production paper. The poor maligned brake drums also require a thorough inspection and if OK, give them a good clean and rub with coarse emery or production paper.

7. Assuming that you are happy with the initial inspection, it is time to begin the adjustment.

8. In the case of Girling or Semi Girling brakes, the brake drum is fitted and the adjuster is wound-in until the brake shoe revolves freely with the linings making the faintest of contact.

For non-Girling brakes, I start by wrapping shimming around the pivot of the brake shoe, opposite end to the actuator, with a 0.010 in shim. The brake drum is fitted and the amount of rub is checked. The amount of shimming is increased or decreased to achieve a slight rub. Through experience I have found it is difficult to fit a shim more than 0.030 inch thick at the pivot end. The brake shoe pivot point will not accept this thickness of material even if it is very worn.

9. The next course of action is to make new contact shoes for the actuator end. If we look at the pre-­Girling brake shoe it can be seen that the aluminium shoes are fitted with steel pads where the brake actuator operates. Each brake shoe must be treated separately. The shoe pad thickness must be increased until the lining makes the slightest contact with the fitted drum. This shimming is then removed from this shoe and shimming added to the opposite shoe operator pads until this lining makes a light rub. Once the measuring has been sorted out the shimming is fitted to both pads and the brake drum re-fitted and checked once more for rub. If the brakes are too tight, equal amounts of shimming must be removed from the pads until a light rub is achieved.

10. Operations 8 and 9 are repeated for each of the remaining brakes. Once the shimming is sorted, it is better to fit one plate equal to the amount of shim used at each brake operator pad.

11. Once this operation has been carried out, the front and rear brakes can be reconnected.

12. Do not connect the foot brake at this point.

13. Fit the drive wheels to the hubs.

14. Go round the car giving each wheel a turn with the hand to experience the amount of friction.

15. Increase the tension on the brake cables using the handbrake. Increase the tension one notch at a time until the brakes begin to work.

On pre-Girling cars the front brakes should operate slightly before the rear. This is so that under heavy braking conditions the brakes act together. Alter the balance by adjusting the front brake quadrant.

16. It may be necessary to adjust each rear brake cable to length to achieve equal braking. Where adjustable cables are fitted at the rear, the adjustment is simple. However, in the case of fixed cables the dreaded adjuster will need to be used.

17. When a balanced set up has been achieved, the foot brake can be adjusted to give satisfactory operation.

18. If you have a friendly garage where they will let you test on their MOT brake test machine, don't hesitate to use it to balance the brakes, it saves loads of time.

This method of obtaining equalisation by shimming each wheel in turn has taken as long as four hours. Brake adjustment thereafter has taken a very short time indeed. It is better to adjust regularly as the balance can be maintained and the brakes are more efficient.

I hope this article spurs the non-technical members to attempt their own brake adjustment. Let's face it - you have nothing to lose. The Bl...y brakes didn't work anyway!

Waiter Wheaton