On or around Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:18:02 +0000 (UTC), Simon Isaacs enlightened us thusly:
with good reason, as a disc that breaks in service could kill you. I drive around in various old heaps, but generally the brakes and tyres are OK.
Indeed, which was my point, although I made it in a rather roundabout manner.. Force of habit!
So that's another disadvantage to drums, having to clean inside the bloody things after off-roading :-/
Unfortunatly they also heat up much quicker than drum brakes in the first place. And when they're too hot, boy, are you f**ked.
Alex
Drill a couple of holes in the backing plate and just hose them out with a high-pressure hose. No disassembly required.
On or around Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:17:48 +0000, Alex enlightened us thusly:
only, probably, 'cos of greater mass to heat in the drum. If you once get a drum hot enough to fade, it's gonna take a while to cool down again and may even put the linings on fire.
Interestingly, just fitted EBC green pads to the front of the minibus. initial bite is not quite as impressive as standard ones in good condition (although they may not be fully bedded in yet) but once they warm up a bit they stop pretty impressively. considerably more actual stopping power than the rather iffy looking standard pads I removed from it, which were not more than half worn.
...and Austin Shackles spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...
Also, when discs/drums heat up, they expand. With discs, this tends to increase the pressure of the pads on the discs. With drums, they are expanding away from the shoes. I don't know if this makes much difference in the real world (tm) but it's a factor in favour of disks from a theoretical viewpoint.
Richard Brookman uttered summat worrerz funny about:
There is definately a trend emerging here. Most of the Welsh contingent are well versed in brake fade. Austin is still looking for the mecca of pads and our last trip through Wales with the Caravan to Bass camp left me cursing Welsh mountains.
It's got to be the mountains and nowt to do with the amount of beer and sausages. Series Brakes are fine in these here parts ;-)
Lee
Lee Hi,
Here in Greece we also tend to prefer disk brakes since our country is extremely hilly and mountaineous road full of inclines and turns are the standard with very scarce straight and level roads.
In addition to the inclines and road tweasts you have to also account for the legendary Greek summer heat (ambient temperatures of about 40 to 42 degrees Celsius being a standard during mid July to mid September.
So fade resisting brakes are required for sure.
Take care Pantelis
Well I have yet to see water supplies at the top of Welsh passes for vehicles to top up their brake cooling tanks. Saw this in China. Every truck and bus would stop, fill up the large roof mounted tank and then leave two trickles of water behind them as they decended the pass. These where long passes though 20 to 30 miles of steady down, 2nd or 3rd gear grind going up...
Having faded the brakes on the Mondeo going down Hartside I'm now use the waggly lever thing in the middle a bit more to take the load of the brakes of what ever I'm driving.
On or around Sun, 19 Feb 2006 00:01:28 -0000, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:
gotta say, the only things I've faded brakes on are suboptimal in some way, like badly worn and thus thin discs, or siezed calipers causing excess drag and therefore heat.
The minibus brakes weren't fading, they were just not as good as I'd like.
Another car had a siezed caliper, so much so that you couldn't get the car above 30mph... Unfortunately I had to get somewhere and had to stop about every 10 mins for that brake to cool down. The red glow from the disc the first time I stopped was a little alarming, no sign of fade though. Yes the other three wheels where normal but remember the drag was stopping the car going above 30...
My mate can beat that. I think we did the pads during the week and then went offroading the next weekend. It started grinding the next day and we found that he worn the pads right down to the metal.
The pads came from paddocks and they replaced them for free when we next went!
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