Date:         Mon, 4 Jun 2012 22:16:23 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: front brakes
In-Reply-To:  <B20E8EC0-D043-40ED-B2F4-B76DD4CF5017@q.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

   If you drive downhill in a manner consistent with your brakes, your load
and the severity of the descent, big brakes are not "needed".   Big Brakes
are useful when you are 'in a hurry'....Like driving a racecar, or speeding
downhill because you are late or impatient.   Or you live in a city with
lots of high speed traffic and hills, something like that.
  I wouldn't try maximizing my speed downhill  on a highway with lots of
switchback corners and hard braking,   in a fully loaded automatic vanagon
with standard brakes..... Just like a Big Rig or a Gi-normus Motor Mansion
hauling a toy box or a Humvee.....your loaded automatic vanagon can be made
to overheat it's brakes by driving it too aggressively and braking too hard
and too frequently.  Any vehicle can be made to overheat it's
brakes...Brakes simply turn inertia into heat (through friction)
Conversely, almost any vehicle can safely navigate without braking problems
if driven sanely, keeping in mind the load and the hill.   You see fully
loaded semi's doing 20mph downhill because they know they don't have the
brakes to hold back their huge inertia when fully loaded, so they use the
motor to help with braking by selecting a low gear.
   Just pick a low gear at the top of the pass and let the van descend with
your foot off the gas...applying brake only seldom when you encounter an
extra steep decline or a sharp corner.   So what if you have to go more
slowly than the smaller lighter cars with bigger brakes...
   Vanagons do have pretty small brakes.   I don't think I have ever
'locked up' mine under braking...maybe the engineers were ahead of their
time with a primitive ABS by making the brakes really small....Hmmm. I
think I will try to lock the brakes on a deserted road sometime...see if I
can actually do that...
  Don Hanson

  One thing that makes a big difference for effective brake performance is
heat.  A simple way to reduce heat in brakes, should you need to, is with
deflectors that channel some air into the brake rotor and caliper.
Performance cars sometimes have a deflector on the a-arm that pushes air
into the front brake rotors...Racecars have scoops and brake cooling ducts
that direct a LOT of air onto the hollow front perforated brake
rotors....If I had heating issues with my Vanagon brakes, I would do that
first....get some air to the fronts, where 90% of your effective hard
braking is done..   In our racecars some guys actually used VW rear discs
that were smaller than the Big Reds normally found on the German racers
because they were lighter and the rear brakes didn't do much stopping
anyway....You see many photos of racecars going at a corner with the rear
tires actually off the track....you could have all the brake in the world
on a wheel like that....or no brake at all and you'd still get the same
braking effect.

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:35 PM, Karl Wolz <wolzphoto@q.com> wrote:

> I've put nearly a half million miles on my Westy with the original smaller
> brakes.  Boiled my DOT 3 fluid once, about twenty-five years ago, then
> learned to drive.
>
> Bigger brakes would be nice, but certainly not a necessity.  If I wear out
> tires, brakes, and front end components at the same time, I'll do that
> upgrade.
>
> Karl Wolz
> Sent from my electronic umbilicus
>
> On Jun 4, 2012, at 6:07 PM, Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
> > On 06/04/2012 04:39 PM, Dennis Haynes wrote:
> >> Driving a vehicle in hilly territory requires some skill. While brake
> >> upgrades and such buy some time or capacity any downhill application of
> the
> >> brakes for an extended period will become a problem.
> >
> > So my question is: will DOT4 brake fluid and attentive use of engine
> > drag via downshifting pretty much make bigger brakes a non-issue?
> >
> > If the answer is "yes," then I've saved money for something more
> > interesting.
> >
> > --
> > Jack "Rocket j Squirrel" Elliott
> > 1984 Westfalia, auto trans,
> > Bend, Ore.
>