[Healeys] FW: Drum Brakes

Patrick & Caroline Quinn p_cquinn at tpg.com.au
Thu Jan 29 00:40:26 MST 2015


G'day

 

The Le Mans tragedy was in 1955 and it nothing to do with brakes. Hawthorn
was running down the straight and veered at the last moment to go into the
pits. Pierre Levegh in the Mercedes was behind Hawthorn and moving to pass
him. Then Levegh had to swerve to avoid Hawthorn's Jaguar and in doing so
hit the rear of Macklin's Austin-Healey using it as a ramp, causing it to
ignite and fly into the crowd.

 

It's true that the Jaguar and Austin-Healey had disc brakes while the
Mercedes had drums as well as a rear air dam.

 

Hoo Roo

 

Patrick Quinn

Blue Mountains, Oztraya

 

From: Healeys [mailto:healeys-bounces at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of richard
mayor
Sent: Thursday, 29 January 2015 1:27 PM
To: healeys
Subject: [Healeys] FW: Drum Brakes

 

Any race is bad with drum brakes. They just get hot and will fade. So,
racers do not use their brakes sometimes. They would throw their car
sideways into the turns and let their tires scrub off speed. As the drums
and shoes cool down they would begin to work again. I've been there!
But to answer your question..... in The 24 hours of LeMans I'm sure there
were complete changes to drums and shoes in the 30's, 40's and the early
50's.  Remember, that early 50's race incident at LeMans (1954?)  with the
Mercedes, Healey and Jaguar,  where about 80 spectators were killed, only
the Mercedes had drum brakes.  The Healey 100 and the Jaguar both had disc
brakes.  

Richard Mayor 

  _____  

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 09:48:44 +0800
From: healey.nut at gmail.com
To: steveg at abrazosdata.com
CC: healeys at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Healeys] Drum Brakes

I'm sure LeMans was murder on drums, anyone know if they would replace the
brakes in those days during the course of the race?

On Thursday, January 29, 2015, Steve Gerow <steveg at abrazosdata.com> wrote:

IMHO the basic issue with advanced drum brakes is complexity (i.e. cost). 

 

Late '50s early '60s Alfas had aluminum alfin drums with diagonal fins with
cast-in steel liners and cast aluminum triple-leading shoes. That's 6
cylinders on the fronts alone.

 

The ATE discs Alfa and Porsche adopted provided equivalent or better
stopping power at less complexity and cost. I heard later Porsche's reason
for going with discs was cost.

 

As a side note, In the '70s, Phil Hill said the drums on Grand Prix cars
would go away part way through the race; in combination with burning up 60
gallons of fuel in a rear tank, this made for pretty interesting handling.

 

--

 

Steve Gerow

Altadena, CA, USA

BN6

Check out my galleries:

http://www.pbase.com/stevegerow/

 


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