On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:21:12 -0500, clare at snyder.on.ca wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:13:58 +1100, "Tom Miller"
wrote:


As a matter of fact, with the first car I ever
owned* I didn't need to
worry about burst brake lines.

It was a Ford Model A from the thirties, and had
four wheel mechanical brakes. It was also the
easiest damn car to work on I ever had, you
could do practically everything with just an
adjustable wrench, a screwdriver and sometimes a
BFH.

Jeff

I Had a 29 Chev when I was a kid. The braking
system was mechanical on it as well. It was always
interesting when you hit the brakes. The only
direction it wouldn't head for was straight ahead!

That was my VW. At 30 or above, hang on for deal life and jab the
brakes to see which way it was going, then lean on them.

My 1950 Austin had hydraulic front/mechanical rear brakes, and since
you never hit them hard enough to move the mechanicals if you lost
hydraulics, the only way to stop was to jamb the tranny into two gears
at once - either first and third, or second and fourth possibly
including reverse. If you stopped on a hill this way, you either had
someone push to relieve the pressure, or removed the top of the
gearbox and pounded the gears out of engagement.
Sometimes I wonder how any of us ever survived into adultery.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada