Re: brake cooling on a '39 Super 8- a possible solution

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2016/3/28 8:37:55

I drive my car a lot, including through the quite steep roads through Pennsylvania, and have never had a problem with brake fade due to overheating.

Well, then you have something rather unpleasant to look forward to experiencing in the future. Brake fade with drum brakes in repetitive hard braking situations is common enough and was so even when these vehicles were new, I suspect that most all who tour extensively in hilly country have experienced it to some degree at one time or another. On Henry Joy V in NJ on a long, steep grade we had a fair number of white knuckles and smoking brake linings both prewar and postwar, despite ample warnings to disengage overdrive before the hill and use a lower gear when descending. Ditto for the PAC National at Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes. If you took driving lessons before automatic transmissions became common you were probably taught "if you need a lower gear to ascend a hill, you need a lower gear to descend it". Still good advice today, perhaps even more so.