Disk Brakes?

[chris18-paseo]

do any of the paseos have rear disks as i want to change my drums?

[riko666]

what paseo you got, si or st? if its the ST (i.e. no ABS) jbmotorsport do a rear disc conversion kit for £300 + £30 fitting. basically they use a starlet gt rear axle and fit it on methinks. Im just waiting for them to make the kit available for ABS equipped 'seos :(

[toyotasera.co.uk]

Discs are not necessarily better than drums.

If you look at the friction material area of the drum brake shoes and compare against the area of the pads, you'd find that the drums have a much larger area than the discs.

Maybe it would be interesting to do some sort of brake test - two identical cars, one with discs, one with drums to test stopping distance from a certain speed. It may surprise people.

[riko666]

meh, discs work a lot better imo otherwise they wouldnt have been deemed obsolete on the front brakes. though on the rears it wouldnt make much of a difference would it, very little brake bias is directed to the rear as such, and i think with discs its harder to lockup the rear wheels than with drums...and with discs as well, there's the risk that when parking the discs could shrink due to cooling and not provide as good a park brake

[nrgizerbunny]

discs work better for the following reasons:

1. better cooling - therefore less brake fade

2. bigger mechanical advantage, you can use bigger pistons in a disc assembly than you can in drums.

3. although the brake pad surface may be smaller the disc pad force is pretty much normal to the disc. on a drum its either trailing or leading and therefore not efficient as the force occurs at an angle.

4. similar to number 2, bigger force is generated by bigger pistons and even though the surface area is smaller, the retardation force is larger.

discs are inherently better than drums except in one aspect and thats the handbrake. if you've been caning it and then park up, the brakes start to cool. in a drum braked car this doesn't matter as the drum shrinks and the brake effectively gets stronger. in a disc braked car the disc shrinks and the brake slackens off.

based on wheel sizes being the same, a car with drum brakes all round would not be anywhere near as good as all round discs. but in normal use front discs and back drums would probably not be much different to all round discs, but that would dependent on the weight of the car.

just my 2 pence worth

[chrisb]

Did anyone mention drums look pants!

CB

[riko666]

hehe, well if anyone wants to get rid of the look of the drums they can get what basically every chav is getting.....fake discs which you stick behind the wheels!

oh, and i couldnt have said better myself nrgizer

[Bakewell]

wat engine are you running. is it standard? if so don't take this the wrong way by WHY bother with all that work that will not make that much difference. you will feel more difference if you got some nice pads up front and disks. most of the braking is do be the fronts any way

[nrgizerbunny]

i'd agree 100% with bakewell. you'll notice a bigger difference with decent discs and pads than you would changing the back to discs.

the more severe the braking, the more weight transfer there is to the front of the vehicle, so the front brakes do more work.

The only exception to this is if you are running stiff springs, springs not only restrict weight transfer in a side to side movement, they also do it front to back. So by running stiffer springs you end up with less weight transfer and ehnce the back brakes do more work.

[toyotasera.co.uk]

My Sera still has drums on the back. My Sera also has a turbo engine transplant, and I don't feel the need to change from drums to discs.

The easiest way to improve brakes on a Starlet based car is to replace the brake fluid with good stuff, eg Castrol Super Response DoT 4 or a DoT 5.1 brake fluid and some good pads. Some braided brake hoses will also make an improvement.

[chris18-paseo]

cheers for the advice think i'll leave the back now then and get good front brakes.