expanding on this theme, and intentionally top posting to annoy the
purists - I have a 1938 plymouth P6, whcih for years was my only car -
it had a external band emergency brake behind the trans which would
get nicely covered with oil - one day I came up to a red light kinda
fast, there was a small car already stopped at the light, and when I
pressed on the brake pedal, there was nothing - the fluid had leaked
out. So, I pulled the trusty emergency brake lever, compressing the
oiliy band around the oily drum. Now, this big car was going about
45, so even with the oil, there was a lot of heat, but not much
friction (initially), leading to a good rush of adrenalin. So, I
downshifted from 3rd to 2nd (you could do that by double clutching),
and the straight 6 let out a startled roar, causing the guy inthe
small car to look in his rear view mirror to see what bad thing was
about to happen to him. About that time, the heat in the band reached
critical temperature and the oil caught fire (huge puf of black smoke
comes out both sides of the car and a burst of flames from the oil
vapor) - I see the eyes in the rear view mirror get much bigger and
the shoulders tense up. With the puff of flames, the oil was all
gone, so now the brake worked and locked up the rear wheels and I
skidded to a stop about 6 inches from his rear bumper - as I stopped
the light changed, and he drove off kinda shakily. I followed, using
the now clean parking brake for the rest of my journey.

aaah, the folly of youth.





On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:47:40 -0500, Jeff Wisnia
wrote:



My old '49 beetle had 4 wheel cable operated brakes - hand brake
applied all 4 through the same set of cables.

My '28 Chevy National had 4 wheel rod operated brakes, external band
on the rear, with a hand operated internal expanding brake on the
rear. To stop real fast you used both to keep the relatively
lightweight drums from distorting.

The emergency brake in the '55 Chrysler convertible the first SWMBO and
I used to run sports car rallies in had a single cable operated drum
brake just behind the xmission to snag the prop shaft.

The teams in the real sporty cars laughed when we showed up in that
monster, but changed their tunes when we started taking home trophies.

I still have a photo of that car, and the motor driven Curta Calculator
rig I built just for rally computing.

http://home.comcast.net/~jwisnia18/temp/rallying.html

Jeff
Bill

www.wbnoble.com

to contact me, do not reply to this message,
instead correct this address and use it

will iam_ b_ No ble at msn daught com