Stupid design of the century

[B.G. Smith]

Just pulled the rear brake drums on 92 Chevy 1500 pickup. Must have taken the mechanical design of braking systems back 70 years when they designed this one. Riveted shoes, when they wear you can't get the drum off, no access to adjusting star wheel. Has a hole where you are supposed to be able to release the emergency brake lever but that must have been added as an after thought. Oh well, that's why I drive a Dodge. bg

 

[QRTRHRS]

Speaking about dumb brake setups...

When I replaced the rear disc's on my wifes 98' Ford Exploror, I soon found out, they still used drum brakes for the emergency brake. What a great idea! Now you need to buy both disc pads and drums. Fun to get the fingers in to work with too.

 

[Lnwing]

The 240 series Volvos had the disc w/drum emergency set-up also. We put over 200K on our 82' Turbo, and don't remember doing anything to the e-brake.

 

[TPCDrafting]

My old truck was a '91 chevy 1500. One time I went to hit the park brake and heard a big snap and then no park brake. Well I had to drive it home and checked it out the next day. A pin that holds the e-brake lever on in the rt rear had snapped and several parts had floated around in there on my trip home. I trashed the drum and shoes. Had to replace both.

 

[KFroese]

the rear disc set up with the drum inside the roter is the best design out there. it's been used in the foreign car market for years. this way the e brake and normal brake are 2 different systems.

when gm started useing rear disc with the e brake in the calipers the system was horrible. they never have a good pedal. the gm designed calipers are a terrible design. it's been about 7 years since i worked in a shop, but the gm boys never got there act together when it came to rear disc. sounds like ford is just trying to copy a proven system.

i'm surprised you had to change the e brake shoes, they should last forever, unless some one drove with the ebrake on or they were miss adjusted.



on a different forum somone wanted to convert their ctd dodge to rear disc useing the old caddy calipers. we ended up talking him out of it. they bearly stopped a caddy, forget about stopping a truck with a trailer in tow.

 

[QRTRHRS]

Originally posted by KFroese

i'm surprised you had to change the e brake shoes, they should last forever, unless some one drove with the ebrake on or they were miss adjusted.

The Explorer had about 40k when we bought it. The few times I drove it, I noticed nothing unusual. While changing the oil one day, I checked the tires and decided to rotate them. Found one rear disc all chewed up from a sticky caliber slides. When I pulled the disc, the drum emergency pads were worn and in pieces. I don't recall the state of the opposite side. This was my first exposure to this kind of setup.



I wonder if the old mid range truck style where the emergency was on the driveshaft would work better with a bit of updated engineering? Guess not, it would not hold a loaded truck to well.

 

[NETim]

Oh oh!

My wife's '96 LHS has rear disc brakes with the drum type E brake built into the the rotor. And my truck does too!



So far so good. The LHS has 110K on it now. I just put new pads all the way around on it. Didn't touch the E brakes at all.



Tim