I have a look at both rear brakes yesterday and could see nothing wrong and for good messure I bled the brake in question. Braking overall is very good and so I am stumped as to the cause of the MOT failure.

Not leaking doesn't mean the slave cyls are not seized or stuck, indeed with the low mileage over the years i suspect something sticking is whats going wrong here.

I usually get an assistant to press the brake pedal gently whilst i hold one shoe tight with a screwdriver, you should see each shoe move in turn like this as its respective slave cyl moves out.

Might be an idea to roughen the shoes and drum surface up with some emery cloth, then give the car a few fast runs and some heavy braking on a quiet road get brakes nice and hot, i expect an Italian tune up would do the whole car some good anyway.

Also, check the self adjusters are working correctly, tightening up the handbrake cable a tad too much might be preventing self adjustment from working correctly.

Edited by gordonbennet on 30/07/2014 at 19:18