Bert, Chris and Paul, thank you for your advice, every little suggestion came in useful and I am happy to say the little beastie stops like a real car should. I was actually quite surprised how much difference 4 corners stopping as versus only the front 2 makes, we went out on a quiet stretch of road yesterday and did some panic stops with only the front drums operational (these have been adjusted and bled from the start but I was ignorant on the back adjustments), then we put it back up on the stands and checked cleaned adjusted everything as advised and hey presto the darned thing stops u beaut.

In all the time I have been playing with cars I had no idea about radius grinding the shoes to the drums (although we did not need it in this instance) so a quick call to Kent Brake and Clutch (where we bought the M/C) brought me up to speed on that.

Chris your instructions took all the guesswork out of the equation, u dont write workshop manuals do you?

Paul, what a gem of a suggestion, still wondering how many more years it would have taken me to work that out on my own, scary thought.

Thanks again - John

hi ppl, stumbled on this site late last nite due to a rear brake (possibly) adjustment problem. thought I would add my problem here instead of starting a new thread.

A friend aquired a 1968 datto 1000 few days ago with no brake pressure whatsoever, a quick check and the master was replaced with a brand new JB1116 which is a single outlet job with one reservoir which goes to a distribution block on the firewall which then splits front left, front right and single rear(drums all round on this thing).

After bleeding the air (and the rubber bits from the original master) out and adjusting the front drums pedal still very sloppy, straight to floor first pump but only halfway down after that. Didnt know about the rear adjustment, which is what made me go looking and stumbled on this site and then this thread, so thinking there might be a further fault we blocked off the line to the rear brakes at the distribution block and re bled the front again and adjusted the shoe clearance to a slight drag on the drums.

At the moment we have front brakes operational only (car is on stands) we have no air in the lines to the best of our ability and now the master still goes halfway to the floor on the first push but hardly moves on the second and subsequent pumps, the drums lock tight from the first pump but I cant see why the first pump is lower than the others as we put another half litre of fluid thru the front lines and no more air came out and as I wrote above the shoes are adjusted as far as practicable.

At least we know how to adjust the back drums now but if we unblock the line even with the back shoes adjusted it is going to need more pedal travel as the master is going to be pushing fluid into 2 more slaves.

The other thing is that the master seems so tiny considering it has to push fluid into 6 slaves, I would welcome some feedback from someone who is still driving an original functioning setup.

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.