Having a discussion here about drum brakes; does anyone know when the last car that was marketed in the UK and had drums all round was available and what that car was ?
I am assuming that if Trabants have disks all round that it wasn't marketed here and so wouldn't count.
It is either going to be something like a Lada or else something from the UK in the 60's; but does anyone know for sure ?
cheers
Stu
{slight adjustment to header in case any pedantic types think you're referring to musical instruments all round the car ;o) - DD}
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My Wartburg had 4 drums (and 3 cylinders) - I think they were imported until the mid-70's
IIRC, the Fiat-based Ladas had rather good brakes.
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I remember owning an Escort 1.1 Pop that was about a '78 S with drums and no servo,very bad brakes.
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I don't think the Renault 4 ever had disc brakes. My mum bought her third - the top-of-the-range (!) GTL - in 1981, and I think they were still sold here until about 1986. I remember driving that car in 1988, weeks after I passed my test; as I recall, the brake pedal (and the clutch!) required more effort than in the Escorts and Novas I'd learnt in, but the car actually stopped pretty well.
As for drums all round today, look - or listen - no further than the nearest blue Saxo with a big exhaust pipe. };---)
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"Renault 4"
Slight OT, but I wonder if there's a gap for that sort of car now? Something Tardis-like with simple mechanicals and re-configurable seating/load space, but with the advantage of rust-free bodywork. Doesn't matter if it looks bonkers - people even buy stuff designed by Chris Bangle!
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I would hazard a guess at the original Mini which had drums all round until 1984. After that they went to 12" wheel and front discs.
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Yeah, my 1976 Mini had drums alround, and they weren't even up to the job of taming the throbbing 30-odd bhp of the 850cc A-series engine.
It had brakes. For about 7-8 seconds before they overheated and faded to nothing. This would stop you just fine from town speeds, but braking from 60-70 mph approaching a roundabout required a change of underwear. Out of town give way lines and red lights were objects of fear for me in those first few days.
Once the brakes had faded, they needed about a minute to recover. As did I :-)
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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My Mother once had a 1980 Mk2 Ford Escort, one of the very last built before the introduction of the front wheel drive Mk3. It was a 1.1litre in Popular Plus trim in hearing aid beige and was considered sheer unadulterated luxury by my mother at the time because it had cloth seats and a passenger door mirror. Being the Plus model, it also had the benefit of radial ply tyres as the basic Popular model at the time still had to make do with cross plies - remember them? However, it had drum brakes all round and no servo. The brakes were the worst I can ever remember experiencing in any car I've ever driven before or since. Continuous stop start driving also caused them to fade in spectacular fashion so it was always worth leaving a good distance to the car in front.
Fortunately, the asthmatic 45bhp engine meant that there was unlikely to be particular demands made on either the brakes or the leaf spring suspension. Driving at more than 60mph on the motorway also caused the engine to overheat. There was no heated rear window or radio, presumably because the extra load on the alternator would have caused the engine to stall. It's memories of heaps of junk like this which make you realise how far automotive technology has advanced in the last decades.
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"always worth leaving a good distance to the car in front"
That's what we need to improve driving behaviour!
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may be a little OT, but reminds me of my wedding. Fancy car was a beautiful old Austin sedan. I was ferried from one place to another in said vehicle and was talking to owner / driver.
This vehicle had drums all round (cable operated at that!!). He described how hard it could be to drive in modern traffic - especially when somebody nipped in front as you approached a red light. A reall case for both feet!!.
Car must have weighed loads. It had a steel chassis & wooden floor boards !!
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My 1986 D reg Fiat 126 aircooled has drums all round. The water cooled 126 BIS also had drums all round until 1991 when it was replaced by the Cinquecento.
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1973 Escort 1.3L, very late Mk1 version, drums all round and no servo or indeed split braking systems. Used to fade very quickly under repeated braking, almost incapable of locking the wheels!
StarGazer
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I can clearly remember a "brown trouser" moment in my mum's 126. Going quite fast (!) down a hill and applying the brakes - for about 2 seconds the car started to slow down and then - nothing - luckily there was nothing in my path and I managed to get the speed down in time by changing to 3rd gear.
Still a very unpleasant memory.
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I can clearly remember a "brown trouser" moment in my mum's 126. Going quite fast (!) down a hill and applying the brakes - for about 2 seconds the car started to slow down and then - nothing
So that's what's meant by character in cars then?
Bless.
Interesting how the premise of the original post was that it was likely that cheap junk like Ladas would be the more backward cars, when in fact more mainstream manufacturers were the stragglers.
Doesn't surprise me one bit.
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Joining JBJ's off-topic excursion, don't the Kangoo, Berlingo and similar roughly fill the R4's niche today?
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My 1972 LWB LandRover had enormous drums all round with servo. They worked very effectively and would lock the wheels if used hard.
I once had a scary moment free-wheeling with the engine off. Even literally standing on the pedal the brakes had virtually no stopping power. In contrast with the handbrake, which was a drum on the transmission output, and could catapault an incautious user through the windscreen.
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My 1972 LWB LandRover had enormous drums all round with servo. They worked very effectively and would lock the wheels if used hard.
My first drive of a LandRover was the opposite.
My mate once crashed his Volvo 240 into a ditch in the middle of nowhere and couldnt get it out so had to use the farm S3 Landy (a beaten up old thing, moss growing in the window runners etc.) to tow it out. After doing so he drove the Volvo back and I was tasked with driving the Landy.
I set off down this deserted rural road, trying to catch up with the Volvo, got up to about 40mph then noticed he'd stopped at a crossroads. So I started to brake... nothing. Pressed harder, started to get a slight inkling of some retardation... I ended up standing on the pedal as hard as I could and only just managed to stop before hitting the back of the already damaged volvo..
It was a real sweaty-palmed panic moment!
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"Kangoo, Berlingo and similar"
I guess you're right, but I rather miss really wacky cars like the R4, 2CV and Dyane. Perhaps what I really want is an electric car with a plywood body, a chip fat-powered diesel auxiliary and a wind-generator on the top.
I'll get my sandals...
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"Something like this?"
Thank you, Cliff - that will save me having to winterise the outboard!
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the last vehicle with drums all round that i seen was the leicester carribean carnival float.....il get my coat
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My father's last but one car was a Marina 1300 coupe in carp khaki. He ordered it with front discs but it came with drums, and he couldn't be bothered to complain.
He gave the car to me with under 30,000 miles on it. It was in very good nick, not exciting obviously but reliable, simple to work on and fairly economical. However after a few years of disc-braked cars I couldn't get to like its nervous behaviour under braking, which a few years earlier would have seemed perfectly normal.
He used to do his own servicing in retirement. He was doing the brakes one day outside his garage when the local Conservative parliamentary candidate arrived on a campaigning swoop through his suburb, surged smiling up the path and seized my father warmly by the hand... The expression on the poor man's face, my father said, was extremely funny.
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Not for sure, but I can leap forward a fair few years. The Rolls-Royce Phantom VI was produced from 1968 to 1991, and had all-round drum brakes! It was a behemoth of a car, targetted towards heads of state rather than as a normal production-line car, and was a hang-over from the past - even the main model introduced by Rolls-Royce in 1966 had disc brakes. Some might try to exclude it on the basis of low production numbers (average about 15/year, with fewer at the end), but the production was continuous and almost unchanged.
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Years ago i had a 1972 mach 1 mustang with a 5.7 V8 and no emission control, this car a had a 3 speed auto and the dubious ability of spinning the rear tyres in the dry when changing up from 1st to second at about 60mph. Yes acceleration to die for (with some irony) cos yes drum brakes all round and no servo! This caused me some heart stopping moments as at lower speeds the drums were fine and i personally have no problem with drums properly maintained and servoed but at high speed the brakes would fade completely. It is all in the past.
I'm still driving trucks and i have to say i don't think any of the modern foreign trucks with disc brakes could match a well maintained older british truck with drums all round for stopping power, or do i still have rosy glasses?
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- Gordonbennet the ford d series had super drum brakes when set up properly then the cargo came out with discs and they were appaling do you remember them?
Dont no nowt about big waggons though
Last vehicle i remember working on with drums all round was a marina pickup,these had 6 wheel cylinders on them 2 on each front wheel and it was cheaper to go to a scrappie and swap everything over to discs than buy what back 20 years ago were expensive wheel cylinders
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Think you've hit the nail on the head bell boy when you say 'set up properly', i'm sure we've all bought vehicles where the brake adjusters (as well as most other things needing regular adjustment or greasing) were seized solid for the sake of a drop of grease for heavens sake!
Thats probably half the reason disc brakes have become the norm because of their self adjusting properties. Mind you not all were that good remember well the nightmare the rear swinging calipers as fitted to the mk4 zodiac or rover 2000's could be.
Strangely enough our new toyota has rear drums and was surprised but not displeased.
Marina pick up blimey we forget all the more unusual vehicles that some of our oldest companies made.
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>>Strangely enough our new toyota has rear drums
How reasonable. Rear disc brakes, in most cases, are a triumph of marketing over engineering. Weight transfer under braking means that the fronts do most of the work, and the rears are very unlikely to overheat.
Drum brakes do create plenty of stopping power when cold - if anything more than discs which always need a servo, it's on;y their thermal fading which means that discs are more suitable for heavy use.
There were some ABS systems which struggled to work with drums, because drums have different threshold pressure and more (and more unpredictable) free movement.
Rear disc brakes make the provision of a parking brake very difficult - either a disc clamping handbrake with the possibility of hot disc shrinkae which causes the handbrake to come off as the brake cools, or an expensive small drum brake within the top-hat of he disc.
In most cases, a rear drum is a very reasonable set-up, especially in a modern FWD car, where the weight bias is towards the front even before the brakes have been applied.
Number_Cruncher
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>>discs which always need a servo
My '67 2-litre Vitesse had front discs, and no servo, as did my old 750 Panda.
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I agree entirely NC, but one factor you didn't mention was unsprung weight. On a non driven axle, the weight penalty of a drum over an equivalent (small) disk is substantial and will have a noticable effect on the ride.
A further advantage of an all disk set up is that of minimal pedal travel. Other than the old FIAT system (which just didn't work) drum self-adjusters operate in discrete steps and have to have excessive free play to allow for drum contraction. I have never driven a disk/drum equipped car with run-in brakes which has had an acceptable pedal travel - once you have become accustomed to a well maintained all disk set up.
659.
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>>the weight penalty of a drum over an equivalent (small) disk is substantial and will have a noticable effect on the ride.
I can't beleive there's that much in it - OK a drum and backplate is a bit heavier than a disc, but there's no heavy caliper.
>>acceptable pedal travel
As long as there's enough reserve travel, then it's safe. The travel issue is also why it's more difficult to get ABS working well with drums.
Pedal travel and pedal feel is one of those very subjective areas where it's difficult to find any 'right' answers. One thing I know I don't like is the excessively servo assisted Renault brakes which give lots of braking for tiny initial pedal force which always catch me out the first time I use them after driving a normal car.
Number_Cruncher
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>>the weight penalty of a drum over an equivalent (small) disk is substantial and will have a noticable effect on the ride.
Going just a little further with this, if you physically swapped a drum for a disc, even if there was a weight change, the change in ride would be slight. If however you also changed the spring rate to give the same wheel-hop frequency as before, the stiffer spring would then make a more significant change to the ride.
Or, put another way, modest reductions in unsprung mass only make a real change to ride if the suspension is modified to take advantage of the reducedn mass.
Number_Cruncher
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. I have never driven a disk/drum equipped car with run-in brakes which has had an acceptable pedal travel - once you have become accustomed to a well maintained all disk set up.
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>>>>>>>> oh dear
you must have run some right worn out veeicles then :-(
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Or some really good all disk set ups.
659.
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>>Other than the old FIAT system (which just didn't work)
I protest!
The few Fiats I had seemed to work very well. I presume you mean the 'top hat' thing on the shoe with the round friction pads, and the pin on the backplate. I usually found the friction pads cracked and missing on the Fiats I had, but once they were replaced the system worked fine as long as you didn't go smacking them with a hammer. I will agree the shoes were a pig to remove and replace over the drum carrier.
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The whole job was wrongly toleranced. These adjusters sort of worked when the shoes were new. When worn, there was more force from the return springs acting on the shoe webs than the adjusters could handle - so when you applied the brakes the adjusters moved up - let go and they slid partly back, even with good adjuster friction washers.
This would start to happen well before the linings had reached their stipulated minimum thickness. The only way I could get the brakes to work properly on my 127 was to adjust the rear shoes with the handbrake cable. Horrible.
659.
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I remember a friend's Triton motorcycle (Bonneville engine in Featherbed frame). It had a TLS (twin leading shoe) drum brake set up. It was just as good as any current motorcycle disc front brake and did not suffer the lag as water was wiped away by the initial brake application.
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I think your appreciation of current braking technology is slightly behind the times. The braking force from a current motorcycle, say the Suzuki GSXR1000, with twin front discs, each having a six-piston caliper, is phenomenal. In a contest, the Suzuki would be stopped before the Triton had compressed its fork springs.
Those motorcycle drum brakes were great for providing hard braking - the first time. Subsequent uses got less and less effective. The other problem is that the leading shoe design uses a self-servo effect to get more braking, which makes fine adjustments of the braking force difficult to make. There were no self-adjusters on them either, so you had to be tweaking them every few weeks to keep them working properly.
The beauty of discs is that you can just fit the pads and largely forget them. They're self-adjusting, and the braking force is instantly adjustable for more or less braking as required. Trying to do a 'stoppie' (braking wheelstand on the front wheel) with a drum brake would be disastrous, as you need to constantly adjust the amount of braking force. With modern disc and pad materials there is also very little delay caused by cold or wet discs.
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