On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 10:18:41 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 15:51:23 -0400, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 07:41:22 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 17:35:09 -0400, Clare Snyder
wrote:

Likewize - but the FIRST stop with a Drum brake is every bit as
good as the first stop on a disk - and generally has lower drag.

There are 2 too many IFs with that: If it's not wet. If it's not
glazed. Disc pads don't glaze and are less prone to warpage, too, so
it only endears me to them more.

Beg to differ on the glazing. Certain pads are VERY bad fo grlazing -

Thinking back, I can't say that I have ever experienced that problem,
professionally or personally.


And drums most often outlived rotors under "normal" use. Very seldom
suffered pitting - and under "normal" use seldom warped.

I think our differences may lie in SAE vs Metric equipment. Our drums
may have been thinner than yours, and our rotors thicker. I recall at
least a 2:1 difference in replacement. Most of the replacements I did
for customers was from their grinding off the rivets, shoes, or pad
backers with their drums and rotors, running 150% of life. One
caliper cup was damaged when the pad fell out. Those people scare me,
and they're out there on the roads right now. I heard our paper girl
drive by the other day, the metal-on-metal brakes squealing as she
stopped at every house. That's like fingernails-on-a-blackboard to
me.



A large part of the difference may be that MOST of my customers over
the years had "preventative maintenance" done by me.

Only a stubborn few of my "regulars" ever ended up steel on steel

I had few regulars in the dealerships and bodyshop, so I had no input
to their habits, though I would have preferred it. It's easy to save
someone money when they throw it away due to lack of knowledge.


I did get lots of "walk-ins" over the years - but even then I replaced
a lot more rotors than drums, had a lot more "bonded" or "molded" pads
loose their frictionmaterial then I EVER had shoes loose theires,.

Early on, that (losing bond rather than wearing thru) was a problem
with disc pads.


Still is.

ANd it's not metric vs SAE as my experience goes back to the late
sixties when everything was SAE up here too.

The original shoes and drums are still on my '96 Ranger rear axle at
358000km. On at LEAST the 4th set of pads and rotors This set should
last a bit longer since I "upsized" them from 10.15 to 11 inch.

New backing plates, drums, shoes, brake cylinders, etc?
I was shocked when they released the throw-away rotors: So thin from
the start that they'd warp if you hit them on the freeway, and too
thin to even turn once to correct the warp or minor scrape from late
pad replacement. They were expensive back then, too, but now they're
cheap as 'ell.


Amazing. I average 70k on pads new and in the past, and got maybe
100k on rear shoes in days of old. It has been a long while since
I've had front shoes, but I don't recall ever getting more than 40-50k
out of any.


Likely end up putting onthe new rear shoes purchased 7 years or so ago
this summer.

I just got ten years on both axles on the Tundra. Down to 4mm on the
front and 6 on the rear, but I figured that while I was checking, I'd
just go ahead and give it another ten years of life.

Aren't those Tundras something??? My brother has one that's 9 years
old now and other than oil changes he hasn't touched it. Tows a 20
something foot dual axle travel trailer with it

I had a low beam go out 4 years ago, so I put in some whiter bulbs and
really like them. Oil changes, a set of tires, and the brakes are all
I've done with it, too. Oh, there was the smog pump problem last year
which was covered by the extended warranty, thank God. ($1,700 worth)


And yes, I worked professionally as a mechenic for close to 3 decades

Under 20 years pro for me, and I was always in small towns. You
probably have the edge on big cities and time, for sure. How do salt
and snow affect braking systems? You have the edge there, too,
thankfully.

Salt and snow on drum brakes caused a minor ridge at the edge of the
drum, on disk brakes it rots the heck out of the rotors and the
sliders or pins on the calipers, and pops the lining material off the
pads. Sometimes it seized up the drum adjusters or rotted off a spring
- but not really what I'd call common.

Very common to rust the splash sheilds off the disks -

Mabee a BIG reason why your experience and mine differ so much.

Yes, very likely so. My wrench time was spent in balmy Southern
California weather, with a year in Aridzona. LOL.


No arguements at all on carbs!!!

I hope not. It was fun making a poor-running car purr again. But
about the time the CARB (California Air Resources Board came into
being and we were installing smog controls on cars and then attempting
to tune them that it got so bad. I still have a copy of my smog
license from that era, and the memory still stings. Make it purr and
the oxides of nitrogen go up. Make that go away and the hydrocarbons
go way up. And in the sage country of SoCal, the NOX was higher at
night with no traffic than the CARB allowed coming out the exhaust
pipe. No Win BS.


I used to sometimes set a car up to pass emissions, then when done,
reset the thing to run. Would not pass NOX in driveable configuration.
(Honda Civic VX was NOTORIOUS for that - they ran so lean the NOX went
through the roof - get them rich enough to pas NOX and the CO was
borderline and it didn't run worth a crap - and got bad mileage, but
it got a sticker for another 2 years..

Sacre bleu! Wouldn't that be illegal? snort Not many people dared
do that down in the Republik of Kalifornia with the CARB SS around.

Up here, particularly back then, as long as you didn't remove or
dissable a polution control part you were unlikely to get into
trouble.

2 work orders.

One work order for pre-emission checkup. I had gas analyzer but was
not a smog shop - could almost guarantee a pass or fail.

Second work order - correct driveability issues - rough idle, stalls
on decel, or some such thing - reset the timing or air bleed or
whatever to solve the problem - and you were done - and the customer
was happy to get another 2 years out of the car 'till the next
inspection. No "conditional pass" which was officially only available
ONCE

Cool.


Now any vehicle newer than 1997 doesn't even see a sniffer anymore.
If the OBD2 doesn't find a problem, you are GOLD. Depending on the
year you can even have either 1 or 2 monitors not set - so you can
sneak a surprizing amount of stuff through by keeping the tank either
full or below 1/4 tank, etc to keep the monitor from setting. Monitor
not set cannot report an error (such as a minor vapor emission leak,
or even sometimes a dead or dying catalyst. (my 2002 Taurus 4 cammer
has one empty catalyst and has gone as long as 6000km without turning
on a CEL)

Oh, that's cool. I hadn't thought what the computerization of smog
control would bring.