re area of usefulness drums vs discs - take a 3" wide 11" dia drum system -as I
said earlier, the largest the english europeans got to - you get a swept areaof 115 some square ins. take an 11" dia disc, with say a 5" hub (not swept), what
do you get - funny , its 150 sqare ins in my book! so much for that. As for pull
off springs, look at a caliper some time - the seal is a square section rubber
(or whatever) in a square groove. the overhang of the seal out of the groove is
set so that when used the seal flexes a little bfore the piston slides through
it, and when the pressure is removed, this flex is used to pull the pistom back
a bee's dick, and you have little or no residual friction. When the seals have
been overheated and gone hard, they dont flex, and you have binding of the pads.
No most people have never seen boiling or even svere fade, but talk to anybody
who has towed anything down a mountain in something with marginal brakes, and
you will find out it happens. the real cheapskates were those who designed a
car with brakes that could only do 1 panic stop before fading, because to fix
it meant harder linings, which meant better drums, a bigger booster etc and
so on up the line - more research, testing etc. Take a look some time at the
front drum set un on a Benz or ROLLS - the iron cylinders are the biggest I've seen outside commercial systems, but the rest is very simple - no springs or
