Re: Brake stuff

[jlandry@domain.elided (John A. Landry)]

In Linda Tripp's secret telephone recording, Monica and "W. Dustin Laur"
<wdlaur@domain.elided> were heard saying...

>You Made me dig out my good old Ford training books.  It has the whole
>thing in the first one I opened.  The section: Braking and vehicle weight.
[snip]

Yes, but it still didn't say you want the front wheels to lock first...
assuming you can't get all four to lock at the same time.  It seems the key
phrase here is "lock up prematurely."  Heaven forbid... no one wants a vehicle
with touchy - easily locked up rear brakes.

There's nothing more annoying than an unloaded pickup truck that locks up the
rear wheels every time you apply the brakes on anything less than rough
asphalt.  I've driven those sort of trucks in the 70's, but I've never
experienced them spinning wildly out of control when the rear brakes did lock
up.  Yes the rear end would skid, but I would simply steer into the skid and
release the brakes until traction was regained.

In a corner, having the front or rear wheels lock up can be deadly.  I'd
prefer neither set of wheels to lock up ever, but I'm still not convinced that
you want the front wheels to lock up first.  I'm remaining open minded about
this though.

I've had several experiences I can recall where I had front wheel lockup on
glare ice... one in my Traveler a couple of years ago and several in our
Subaru wagon.  That was very frightening... absolutely no directional control
during a skidding situation.  Personally I enjoyed at least having some
directional control when in a skid by having the front wheels turning.

Are we having fun yet??? <grin>

John L.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jlandry AT halcyon DOT com      |
Conservative Libertarian        |  Scout(R) the America others pass by
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Commercial Helicopter - Inst.   | 1976 Scout II Traveler "Patriot" model
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