It's a bit of a silly question, but I'm reading that all the Mini rear brake shoes are 1.25". 7ent even specifically says
"Note that no Mini ever used these wide brake shoes [1.5"] on the rear, and it is a mistake to attempt to fit them in the rear."


(which pretty much answers my question.) Except the shoes I pulled off the car are quite clearly 1.5". So, they clearly work on the car - at least somewhat - as I've had the car since 2008.



I have a set of 1.5" wide shoes but I'm ordering the 1.25" ones, anyway. You can't get much clearer than the above quote. And saving $27 when I am spending over $700 on brakes and suspension parts is silly and pointless. At this point, I'm just curious about others' experiences, since I did have 1.5" shoes on my car.

 

I've got a 79 that I've also had since about 2008 ... when I finally got around to redoing the rear brakes I was surprized to find that my rears had just been going thru the motions and hadn't been contributing squat to my actual stopping! I should have suspected this all along as the e-brake could not hold the car in place on any sort of a grade. (I have Cooper S 7.5 disks up front and they stop the car reasonably well for street use.).

I did have 1.25 inch pads in the rear and there was a very definite worn 'channel' in the drums where the shoes had been riding, with a lip of approx 1/4 inch on either side of the drum, inner and outer 'edge'. IF wider pads had been fitted I suspect this lip or edge would have been 1/2 that and could be cause for the drum to weaken. Just a guess.

Of course another possibility is you don't have the right drums in the rear ... wider drums to mate with the wider shoes . . . I long ago stopped expecting to find the 'correct' parts on my beast. Sometimes I must decide how to repair things - back to original/correct or copy what's present . . . it adds to the fun.

 

i had to ditch my rear drums, they were beat to hell, but i messed around and made some custom brackets to run 1980 vw 9.4 disks with pads and FRONT vw 1980 calipers and tapped in a hydraulic E-brake )) the power is unbelievable!! running 12 rims

 

cool

but a classic needs to be on 10" rims

a BIG way to tell old (ini) from new (INI)!