Dick Benjamin <dickb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This all brings me to the conclusion, that (except for cars in bad
condition....)
I have a feeling I'm missing something here - so please take me seriouslyand tell me where I'm wrong.
Hi Dick and group.
The common thread that I see to these posts would be the consistent state of the owner. Almost all are faced with a shot brake system and are forced to face the economic and practical reality that they must replace the brake system soon to keep using the car. They must consequently plan how to effect repairs, and being the mechanical bunch that we are, there seems
to be a tendency to want to do repairs in the "best" way possible. For the most part, that meas "repair with the components designed for the car".
Not so for everyone. Seems that there's a certain type that gets a zing out of improving things. To each his/her own - I am not putting anyone down here.
It is my firm belief that one should spend the amount of time, research, and money on rebuilding and learning to adjust the stock components and trying that FIRST, before going out and trying to reinvent a car built by a company that was always primarily focused on good engineering. If you're convinced that you really do need an improvement over a PROPERLY fitted and adjusted stock brake system because you are auto-crossing the car or live at the top of a monster set of switchbacks that you drive every day at a high speed, or are doing other unusual things not foreseen by your car's designers, well, there's good reason to start
doing your own engineering (or maybe get a motorcycle).
Older vehicles require patience and knowledge and persistence. Newer ones not so much - to the point of being appliance-like and needing nothing besides gas and oil changes.
Trying to make an older vehicle behave like a new one is not the path that I've had success with. My 1999 full size sedan behaves incredibly and requires virtually none of the skills that I have developed to work on my older stuff. It just works. I do not ask/expect my older cars to behave as my modern car does, nor should they.
I liked your logic argument quite a bit, by the way, Dick. The brakes on our cars were suitable for billions of miles traveled my millions of people in millions of cars worldwide until the disc brake system came out, which was an incremental step forward in service, simplicity, manufaturing cost, and so forth, but my 1964 stops every bit as well
as my 1999 with the exception of the ABS.
Seems to me that the intruduction of disc brakes did not dramatically change highway mortality statistics or dramatically make our roads safer places to be around others (as seatbelts and and airbags obviously did). Therefore, they are not such a good return on investment as to make what you already have so totally obsolete that an upgrade is a foregone conclusion.
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