Do self-adjusters suck?

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Yes - any sort of drum brakes, manually or auto adjusted are just not ideal on a passenger car IMO.

On an 18 wheeler, bus, medium duty truck where the parts are built properly along with the need for the force that a drum brake can provide I can get behind that.

The reason they show up on passenger vehicles is that they are cheap to cheaply make. That was not a mistake - they are cheaper to cheaply make ... you can really cheap out on the drum brake hardware and they will still work about as good as they ever did.

The drum brake set ups on medium duty trucks and larger seem to be built much better.

Originally Posted By: 01rangerxl
Nevermind.

A Lada with manually adjusted drum brakes sounds like a fantastic car.


I think you win the quote of the year!
 
The problem I find is that brake self-adjusters don't compensate for 100% of the wear. That in mind, they can often be left alone for the entire life of the brake shoes.

Another thing to consider is road salt. That would increase the rate at which all those annoying drum brake components develop rust.

Whatever... I hate drum brakes.
 
Originally Posted By: 01rangerxl
Nevermind.

A Lada with manually adjusted drum brakes sounds like a fantastic car.


Horses for courses. The DESIGN was probably more appropriate for 3rd World/Soviet conditions than most vehicles, except perhaps an early Toyota Hilux or Land Cruiser. (Quality control, OTOH....).

When the cutain came down they all went back to Russia, where there was demand.
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Yes - any sort of drum brakes, manually or auto adjusted are just not ideal on a passenger car IMO.

On an 18 wheeler, bus, medium duty truck where the parts are built properly along with the need for the force that a drum brake can provide I can get behind that.

The reason they show up on passenger vehicles is that they are cheap to cheaply make.



I suppose drum brakes must be cheaper to make, but I don't have any problem with drum brakes per se. The problem I have (and the specific problem you seem to actually have, as you actually state above) is with self-adjusters, and expensive self-adjuster implementations don't necessarily work any better.

That Renault 5 self adjuster I mention above was anything but cheaply made, and it didn't work worth a [censored].
 
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Originally Posted By: Garak
If you're relying on them to do their self adjusting by backing up, it should be at a decent speed and some hard braking. Who does that?


Hadn't heard that one, and its not..er..intuitively obvious why it would work..something to do with a lack of self-servo effect when going backwards stops them over-tightening??

Or, more likely, because the back wheels don't do much braking going forwards, so reverse braking applies more load.

Anyway, had a bit of a fossick around, and found this...

http://www.boyandjeep.com/tech-articles/manually-adjusting-drum-brakes

"If the vehicle is equipped with self adjusting drums (most domestic vehicles from the 60′s onward do, my 1978 Ford Courier did not) take it for a drive. Self adjusting brakes work in reverse, in a safe place (large empty parking lots are great for this) back up briskly (about 10 mph), turn the vehicle in one direction, and slam the brakes. Do this three or four times per turning direction."

Stranger still. What's the turn for?

(maybe applying more load to the wheel on the outside of the curve??)

Anyway, worth a try, though it'll be challenging finding a large empty parking lot in Taiwan.

Or, alternatively, a 1978 Ford Courier.
 
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Originally Posted By: Ducked
Hadn't heard that one, and its not..er..intuitively obvious why it would work..something to do with a lack of self-servo effect when going backwards stops them over-tightening??

I'm not sure, either, and that's been discussed a few times here before, with several of us wondering whether or not it's actually true. As for the turning business, in what you came across, that one is news to me. I haven't heard that one.
 
The auto adjusted drum brakes in both of my vehicles just require pressing the brakes while backing up. Out of the driveway, parking spots, etc all seems to do the job
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88


Originally Posted By: 01rangerxl
Nevermind.

A Lada with manually adjusted drum brakes sounds like a fantastic car.


I think you win the quote of the year!




Apart from its manually adjusted brakes, my Best-40-quid-I-ever-spent-Lada's "image" is irrelevant here. I didn't care what it "sounds like" then, and I certainly don't care now.

You'll perhaps not be aware, being American, but in the UK, when Lada's were around, many people, lacking any knowledge or experience of these vehicles, or perhaps any vehicles, or perhaps anything, would parrot negative opinions that they'd heard, perhaps in the hope it would make them seem clever.

It should be easier to resist this temptation if you're American, and have probably never even seen one (unless overseas or as a very rare Canadian import) but you've gone beyond.

Not only are you parroting a parrot, but you've automated the process, perhaps in the hope that, every time you press the post-pedal, you'll seem a bit cleverer.

Its quite neatly analagous to self-adjusting brakes.

Doesn't actually work, but doesn't require any effort, thought or judgement.

And that's important, isn't it?
 
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