I’ll just say this as last 2 cents on drum brakes:

I drove cars so equipped for years and a lot of miles on dry to ice covered roads; they suck compared to disk brake equipped cars. Power brakes won’t change stopping distances of either disk or drum. Power brake drivers forget or don’t realize that thy have to push hard on non-power assisted brakes to get full stopping power. Disk and pad size will determine stopping distances.

Drum brake cars I have owned never self-adjusted very well, and required frequent brake spoon aided adjustments. They also always pulled depending on humidity, and take-up travel, as stated earlier not very effective once wet. Also very slow to dry out once wet this includes sitting over night during humid condition, requiring dragging brakes to heat the linings up to dry them; all four dried at different rates and could be extremely unpredictable until back to normal. All these deficiencies are magnified when driving on low friction surfaces.

If you had to drive in 1960’s traffic one would find its acceleration and stopping to be rather leisurely by today’s standards. There were still a lot of standard three speed vehicles on the road then that did not smoothly pick up speed. After each pokey gear change car’s velocity would slow down a bit than they would lug the next gear causing a compression effect in lines of cars; very frustrating even then.

As for ABS, I suspect that for average driver they are helpful, I have found them to be lacking at times in that they activate too soon when driving on snow making for longer stopping distances. Same goes for traction control, utterly useless in winter driving particularly with front wheel drive, computer always reacts after driver corrective input causing pulling and a necessary second corrective input, and climbing snow covered hills at low speed is imposable.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

My SRT-8 Challenger was the only car I have ever driven that the ABS was worth a crap. It worked flawlessly.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Well, I kind of doubt it's the final 2 cents on drum brakes just because you say so. And it's impossible to have a rational discussion about anything with people that think that driving habits, traffic, and physics have changed since the 60's.

I know when you're 20 you feel that all times before you are ancient history, it is normal psychology, but there are plenty of people around today that drove the same highways in the 50s and 60s so they can vouch that the laws of physics then are the same they are today.

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No one is saying physics have changed since the 1950 s or 60s. We are saying that when if all cars have drum brakes, then there is no advantage or disadvantage between vehicles. Let me put it to you this way, drive a Model T on the 405 in LA at rush hour. Report back your findings from your wheelchair.

Zilla: Same with my AWD 300C, its ABS is the least intrusive I’ve used. To be fair, tire choice and condition makes a big difference as to how ABS reacts. The worst ABS system I had by far was in my 1993 Suburban, (based on 154,000 mi of driving that tank and umpteen sets of tires) that thing’s ABS was beyond useless. If someone spit on the road a mile away it would start caveating and groaning as soon as one got on the brakes…



63Valiant: Me quoting me:
I can see your confusion with my opening statement; sorry. I meant to say that I will cease commenting on drum brakes in this thread, and this is my and only my thoughts on the subject. The rest of the board can chatter away all you want on the subject, and I hope you all do, I’m just not going to reiterate my views…

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC