Drum brakes on "Bluebelle" (France)

[David Thomas]

Bluebelle is proving delightful but I do find baking hard work. Would fitting discs to the front provide a significant improvement! Angel has pointed out that fitting a servo as well would be difficult to say the least. Has any one fitted a factory type sunroof to a standard car? Need spot welding in place perhaps? I have seen some pop top types fitted sometime front and back but I don't like them much. Thanks in advance, Dave T.

 

[pepper]

It become difficult changing over to disc brakes as I had considered doing it to BB. BB runs the 1108 engine and the Hennessey hot up Kit so is no slow coach!

I had a full set of disc brakes and was about to embark upon changing it all over, then suddenly realised that it would leave me with no handbrake! Which would then mean I would have to change the rear brakes too and then either change the crossmember in the middle of the car so I could use a normal handbrake instead of the umbrella type already fitted or I would have to engineer some other way of being able to use the original handle (which I think is how Malcolm has done it on his Gordini engined monster).

In the end I thought sod this for a game of soldiers she stops quickly enough on the drum brakes and they work pretty well, it can all stay as it is!

I'm now just getting round to replacing all the shoes and have got to strip all the brakes down to free off the adjusters as they aren't working to well either! (Anyone got any new backplates hanging around I could buy???

Fitting a remote servo would be far far easier than changing the brakes over and I don't think the standard discs are easier to operate than the drum brakes, I reckon the pedal leverage without assistance would be pretty similar!

Remote servos are pretty freely available (ebay and google searches show there are loads) but the trouble is out brakes are multi line out and most of the ones I've just quickly looked at are only for single line out systems!

 

[reggie]

hard baking

I do a good carrot cake,

 

[DaveP]

I've just put a set of f4 big drums on my tl, it makes quite a difference and is a super easy swap.

 

[angel]

I thought 228mm (F4) drums originally fitted to the Jogging are enough, but three weeks ago I changed my opinion. Some 50 kilometers of steep mountain roads with three more passengers inside brought these drums to their limits. I experienced some fading, but what made me think double about disc brakes was the brake fluid boiling on the front circuit. OK, I don't remember changing it, but I am now thinking seriously about a disc brake conversion.
And it is not necessary to lose the umbrella lever. i have seen one disc conversion that ran a long handbrake cable from the original lever up to the middle of the floorpan, then it split in two. It worked flawlessly.

 

[bantamallan]

R5 Gordini rear discs & calipers are the same as R4 front but have a handbrake mechanism so in theory it should be possible to fit them
Allan