[Healeys] FW: Drum Brakes

[Jean Caron]

Patrick:
Hawthorn actually overtook the Austin-Healey 100S of Macklin just before the pit area and then veered in front of him to go in the pits. Macklin then moved left to avoid Hawthorn and Levegh in the Mercedes coming in behind at a much higher rate of speed had nowhere to go and hit the back of the Austin-Healey and was launched into the crowd. 
There is an excellent book about this tragedy called Le Mans 1955 by Christopher Hilton. 
There is also a very good documentary with interviews of drivers John Fitch and Norm Dewis, find it here:
www.dailymotion.com/video/xlq9ml_the-deadliest-crash-the-le-mans-1955-disaster_auto 

Jean

From: p_cquinn at tpg.com.au
To: mayorrichard at hotmail.com; healeys at autox.team.net
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 18:40:26 +1100
Subject: Re: [Healeys] FW:  Drum Brakes

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 QuinnBlue 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 GerowAltadena, CA, USABN6Check out my galleries:http://www.pbase.com/stevegerow/ 
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