MG Sports Cars

Has anyone used the Scarebird kit or any other rear disk brake kit for the MGB rear axle?

I know about Ford axles, that is not the subject. I am looking for info for the later MGB tube rear.

Jim, i don't know anyone who's used Scarebird, but I did call & talk to him back when I was researching for my car. I recall he said he'd done a lot of the MG kits... may be a good question for the main MG board.

I know you weren't looking for the ford rear end stuff, but one of the ford conversion kits is pretty simple - mainly welding on a Chevy S10 bracket to the axle tube- might work if you can find a rotor/hub assemply that fits the mg axle tube/flange - the drawback is no e-brake without going to something like a cadillac seville rear caliper. Perhaps more fab work than you were looking for, but might be an option (you would need to rework the brackets to fit the mg tube.

There's a scarebird kit for sale on e-bay - buy it now price is $650

Jim,

One of our club members did a program on adding rear disks to an MGB a few years ago.

[www.britcars.net]

I think he used Tony Barnhill's method, except for the parking brake. Wilwood now makes a mechanical spot caliper that would be a better (& legal) choice for the parking brake.

Tony's rear disk brake swap:

[www.theautoist.com]

I have the Scarebird setup on my '79 MGB. This car has the splined hub setup (formerly wire wheels, 15" Mini-lite splined replicas for about the last 10 years). I put on the Scarebird kit on the car just before MG 2006. I've probably put about 5K miles on it since. The car was out of service for about 18 months while I put in the Rover engine and fully rebuilt the car once again.

Everything works well, except I would like a little design work more in the parking brake department. I had to shorten the interconnecting rod that goes from the left side to the right side by about 2 inches in order to get any parking brake action at all. The other issue I have is that the parking brake pads don't remain parallel to the rotor when the parking lever is disengaged, nor do the pads fully retract away from the rotor. As a result, the pads always rub slightly (not enough to feel), but it causes them to wear a bit lopsided - the inner wears at the top, and the outer wears at the bottom (or vice versa - I can't look at the car right now). It doesn't seem to wear the disc unusually, just the small parking brake pads themselves (these are Triumph Spitfire front pads). If you look at the bottom photo on Scarebird's MGB page at www.scarebird.com/12802/19335.html you can see how it's designed. I intend to try a few things, including maybe a return spring, to more positively move the parking pads away from the rotor.

But the main brake is very positive. The braking action between the front and rear seems to be fine, without the need for a proportioning valve. All 4 wheels can be locked up at the same time, and I've applied full force on a wet parking lot, and braking is straight, without the feel of the rear trying to pass the front.

Jag rear parking brakes also do not move parallel to the rotor. That takes a pretty sophisticated mechanical mechanism, the best ones I've seen so far are contained inside the main brake cylinder itself but the adjusters for those can be very bad or very good, there is much variation. If it holds on a hill I wouldn't be too concerned.

Jim

Wayne-

Just the answer I was looking for.

Thanks to all who responded.

Jim

MGBV8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Jim,
>
> One of our club members did a program on adding
> rear disks to an MGB a few years ago.
>
> [www.britcars.net]
>
> I think he used Tony Barnhill's method, except for
> the parking brake. Wilwood now makes a mechanical
> spot caliper that would be a better (& legal)
> choice for the parking brake.
>
> Tony's rear disk brake swap:
>
> [www.theautoist.com]

I just found this forum, so I apologize for reviving this old thread. Does anyone know if this setup would work on an MGA?

Thanks,

Darian