I haven’t really paid much attention to the rear brakes, three MOTs on them and the handbrake seems to work fine (or seemed to until today)
I had to get reconditioned callipers on the rear when I got the car as the numpty garage fitted them by pushing the piston back instead of using the adjuster and they mullered the calliper beyond repair.
Today I was greeted by a scraping noise on braking and when I got home and took the rear wheels off I found this mess
Slider pins look OK, top one still shiny, lower one as in photo but can be sanded as that is just surface crud (looks better than the pictures of the used ones on the autolink site anyway)
The outermost pad has no brake material left on it and the inner most has about 4-5mm left on.
I wonder if the pad material has broken off and I’ve been running on just a bit of material on that pad for a while. Last MOT wasn’t long ago and I had not advisories on the brakes (no advisories on the car at all)
I reckon the brakes have been binding slightly for a while now causing my MPG to fall from 30 to 26MPG over the past 7 months or so.
Other side disc doesn’t look bad, I’ve not had the wheel off that side yet though.
New Discs and pads have been ordered from Autolink as I couldn’t guarantee that mx5parts could get them top me before the weekend.
Hmmm, I must take the rear drum brakes to bits on the Picasso at some point to make sure they are OK.
This worked for me halli. http://mx5oc.co.uk/forum/forums/t/250.aspx
I have been studying that same page for ages (since it was on the old forum) and it scares the Bejeebas out of me 
I’ll be taking the laptop into the garage at the weekend and will be referring to that and my “do it up” Mazda book like the Bible.
I just hope the callipers are’nt seized up as they were only reconditioned (from mx5parts) in October 2006. Only time will tell.
I’m going to go into the garage tomorrow evening and I’ll strip everything down and give a lick of hammerite to anything that doesn’t move.
Anyone fancy a trip to Alnwick on Saturday to give moral support with the handbrake gubbins? Tea and biscuits on constant flow 
Well I did it (all by myself too)
I’m not happy about the handbrake though, I will need to adjust it again tomorrow as it doesn’t stop the car when I push it or when moving. The foot brake operates the rear brakes perfectly.
I didn’t go to the extent you did Pollyana, that level of involvement scares me too much to do myself, perhaps at the Tech day.
It all looks nice and shiny back there now, plus I cleaned the rear wheels with wonderwheels and they came up quite nicely (for my standard 14" winter wheels - They were black with crud)
Stripped and cleaned with brake fluid and a small wire brush:
Cleaned and lubed Piston (again, brake fluid)
The finished article:
Took me far longer than I thought it would (4-5 hours including the test drive, cleaning the wheels and many, many cups of tea)
I didn’t get to hammerite anything. To be honest it didn’t need it. There wasn’t much rust, just a build up of brake dust, salt and general clarts.