Hydraulic hanbrake on drum brakes

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Pumadai

New member
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
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3
Just as the title says would a hydraulic hanbrake work on drum brakes or would it pop the seals on cylinders? I use the car for cheap fun autotests (racing round cones) the car is proving fast enuff but I'm always struggling with hanbrake to point I've fitted new shoes I've also tak welded the adjusters in drum it seems fine for while and just seems to wear out. Normally drum is best hanbrake but cnt get this one working all day at all hence the thaught of hydraulic any advice? Thnx fellow members
 
Hi

I can't 100% answer your question as I don't have any experience with this type of setup, but can comment the following....

* Would operating the rear drums hydraulically by hand be any different than stamping on the foot brake hard?
* Operating the rear brakes hydraulically would force fluid down to the fronts making them operate at the same time?
* Fitting a non-return valve (if one exists for brake lines) between the front and rears may work but would not reduce/relieve the pressure in the rear lines after the foot brake is used - potentially causing the rears to lock up permanently?

Fitting additional/separate calipers on the rear especially for this may be a more (theoretically) practical solution based on the above, but would it be even possible mechanically and what would the cost implication be in relation as to whether it would be worth the cost/time/results...?
 
Ye thnx for the reply like u said it should be same as pressing foot brake. I don't think it will pressurise towards the front only from the hydraulic cylinder back I would have thaught. But I just don't know am I applying more pressure than foot pedal would apply.
 
Can you not fit a hand operated valve/lever into the system which isolates the front and only operates the rears? so instead of yanking the handbrake lever you operate the lever then brake as normal to lock the rears only
Once the lever is released the brakes should revert back to normal use, something similar must be used on rally cars?
As for pressure, it should not require any extra pressure at all so cylinders, so long as they are in good nick should not be affected.
How do you do it? ....absolutely no idea but a simple line lock device should do the trick
 
I had a hydraulic handbrake on my Escort RS2000 and it worked well but that system also had a brake bias pedal box with 2 master cylinders one for the front circuit and one for the rears so the handbrake worked on the rear circuit only. If your car is purely a competition car and doesn't need ABS how about fitting some Focus 260 mm rear discs and calipers? If you don't need to fit the ABS set up to the rears then it's a real easy swap over and your handbrake will be much better. You can keep the ABS but the machining work is all the hard stuff on fitting discs to the rear.
Barry
 
You should be able to fit a hydro with it's own brake master cylinder. It should work completely independant of the other brakes.
I've got dodgy old drums and old shoes but my rears lock ok when doing autotests/autosolos. Are you sure there's not something else wrong with your setup like worn stretched cables?
 

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