Why Some Cars Have Drum Brakes Instead of Disc Brakes

Rev your engines, today I'm going to talk about

drum

brakes

on your car versus these

brakes

on your car, now the rear brakes on this car are

drum

brakes but the front brakes are

disc

brakes, hey why is it like that ? How did that come about? Well drum brakes

have

been around for a long time, hey wagons,

some

of them

have

drawn type brakes, they work pretty well and they've been around for a long time, drum brakes are exactly what they say is that there is a drum and inside there are brake shoes and when you step on the brakes the cylinder pushes outward and pushes the brake shoes that are curved against the inside and for a long time this was the best system out there, it's relatively sealed from the elements as the shoes are in and this covers them, but they have one big drawback: they tend to fade after rapid, repetitive use of the brakes, like in racing, where you stop and then accelerate and stop and accelerate coming out of the corner and brake. and then you accelerate, they fade, so for racing and really heavy loads they came up with these

disc

brakes that don't fade as much and also work better in water situations, because they can squeeze the water out as you go. it gets tight, where if water gets inside the drums, they really slide and slide as they dry, when I was young in a 1970 Ford Maverick and it had four wheel drum brakes and believe me, especially in more climates cold, if they had drums. you would brake and go through deep water, then you hit the brakes, they would just slide because the water would come in and slide like crazy where the discs are, those pads, you can squeeze them and since they are in the open the water comes out much easier, now The first real mass production use of disc brakes was in the 1940s for airplanes and tanks, for two different types of reasons, but this is what they are, disc brake systems tend to weigh less, take They take up less space, so on an airplane that's a big deal, fighter planes want to make them as fast as possible and a big B-17 bomber, hey, that's a lot of weight, so disc brakes can handle that. heat when you step. the brakes and all that weight condense it and dissipate it better than drum brakes and in the tanks, there was a limited amount of space with the treads, so they found that the disc brakes would fit better in that smaller space , also, Hey, the tanks went everywhere, in water, mud, and you are better off with disc brakes in a bad environment than with drum brakes, now, as for

cars

, the first real use of disc brakes It was in 1951 at a British racing engine company. , they had a Formula One car that had front disc brakes, now disc brakes had such an advantage in racing that all the racing

cars

quickly switched to disc brakes because they hit the brakes before reaching a corner, then They stopped at a speed and then they hit the brakes, they don't want them to fade and they want them to work as well as possible and of course in a race car weight is everything, you want to make it as light as possible, so they all passed to the discs. , now the first mass produced American car had four wheel disc brakes, it was a '65 Chevy Corvette, it only makes sense that it would be a sports car, they wanted the Corvette to be as capable as possible for racing, the guys were competing with them and having the absolute best performance, making it the first American car to come with four-wheel disc brakes, so you might well wonder why this Toyota Celica that was made 30 years after the Corvette It has discs in the front, here in the front. but drum brakes in the rear, well of course part of this has to do with cost, this is based on the Toyota Corolla, they always had drum brakes in the rear and they are

some

what cheaper to manufacture and it is a really low-end sports car.

A lot of people wouldn't even call it sporty, that's why it has discs in front and drums in the back, but in terms of normal driving, it doesn't really affect it much, because the front brakes are especially when they are disc, they do more than 90% of the braking of your vehicle anyway, in normal driving, the main thing the rear brakes do is keep the vehicle from rocking from side to side like a wild car when you're braking and i. I always get people asking me about my car by talking or emailing me questions, oh Scotty, I have discs in the front of my car and drums in the rear, should I buy a disc conversion kit for the rear brakes to make them work? better and my answer?

It's always Hey, unless you're competing, don't waste your money. It doesn't affect them much. There are still a lot of motorcycles that still have discs in the front and drums in the back, because if you know anything about riding motorcycles, you use the front brake all the time, some of the guys don't even use the rear brake. now racers do it because they are doing completely different types of normal street driving dynamics, a normal motorcycle driver uses the front brake all the time, that's how he slows down and that's how he controls the vehicle and other guys me they will ask.

Hey, I have regular disc brakes on my car, but should I put drilled or slotted rotors on them? Well, again, just if you're racing the vehicle, that allows the heat to dissipate a little faster because of all the holes the air can go through, so in a stop-and-go race, you stop and go, they won't fade, but actually, for normal driving, the non-grooved disc will stop your car faster for once because there is more surface area. area so that the pads squeeze more surface area and the heat can be removed faster and stop your car faster, plus there is a big disadvantage of drilled and slotted discs, one that tends to make noise because you have the slots of the drilled holes and a lot of times you can hear it and feel it when you stop and guess what, we came out a lot faster, serious racing guys, hey, they change the rotors and discs after every race, you're not going to do that. drive your everyday driver, so in any modern car, the system that comes with it for everyday driving is pretty good as designed, but let's say you're building an old 1970 Maverick like the one I used to drive and that It had four wheels. drum brakes, in that case it would definitely be worth removing just the front drum brakes and replacing them with disc brake systems, that would brake much better, so now you know the truth about drum brakes versus disc brakes, so Yes You don't want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring the doorbell!