On Tue, 26 Nov 2002, Simon Reinhardt wrote:

> Interesting. What cars is this on? I helped my neighbor do the brakes
> on his Lexus, and the rear discs had drums AS THEIR CENTER SECTION!!!
> It was weird! And hideously efficient. The drum parts were about as
> large as the rear drums on an A1/A2 VW.

Yeah, I've heard of this design too.  My Honda has 4-wheel disc brakes,
but instead of using the center of the rear disc as a drum they made the
handbrake mechanically engage the rear pads.  This is the only emergency
brake I've ever seen that actually works well enough to deserve the name.
The car WILL NOT MOVE with it on.  Any other car I've owned you could
drive off wih the brake set, though sometimes only with difficulty.  One
Ford Aerostar I drove had an emergency brake that would only grab well in
the forward direction, so you had to be careful when parked facing uphill.

BTW, total brake system failure *can* happen even in dual-circuit designs.
A guy I knew had an El Camino lose all braking ability quite suddenly due
to a bad master cylinder.  Don't know the details of what went wrong in
that case.

             _ _
  __ _ _   _| | |  | David M. Brodbeck (N8SRE)              Ypsilanti, MI
 / _` | | | | | |  +-----------------------------------------------------
| (_| | |_| | | | @ cyberspace.org
 \__, |\__,_|_|_| "BSD is for people who like UNIX.  Linux is for people
 |___/             who hate Microsoft." -- Brendan Howes