> employ the technique they use in a land rover, they have two
> brakes on each wheel, and one on the prop shaft, this is the
> hand brake. I'm sure you could manufacture something like this.
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While this may seem like a good approach, and as a "parking brake" may work
in most situations, with the standard, open (or non locking) differential
this would not work in a true emergency, especially on slippery surfaces,
the way you would think. What happens is that when you apply that brake,
the braking action is applied to the wheel with the least traction -
through the diff. In this case one wheel locks (because of the
differentiating action), and you enter into a dramatic spin. It works VERY
well, every time. In fact I used this to my advantage when I built a front
engine/rear drive dune buggy. I had just such a drum brake right on the
nose of the differential. It acted like an automatic cutout brake (for
those of you not familiar these are separate brake actuating systems
usually controlled by a hand lever to the old emergency brake system,
controlling each rear wheel independently) When entering a turn, on sand
or other slippery surface, you apply that brake on the inside wheel
(usually the one with less traction) and it whips you right around, by
locking or braking that wheel and alloying the other wheel to spin freely
around the locked wheel like a pivot point. With the "drum on the nose"
all I had to do was enter the turn and stomp on the brake pedal. The
cutout braking was applied automatically, and I could turn 180 in almost
the buggy width! Great fun on the sand, truly terrifying in an unexpected
emergency situation!!
Barry Schwartz (San Diego) bschwart@pacbell.net
72 V6 Spitfire (daily driver)
70 GT6+ (when I don't drive the Spit)
70 Spitfire (project)
73 Ford Courier (parts hauler, rain vehicle)
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