Thread: Brake Overhaul Query .......

Your Rover (if the brakes are original) has a leading and trailing shoe on the rear wheel and two leading shoes on the front wheel. Leading shoes grip much better when contacting the drum.

When the car is going backwards the leading shoes become trailing shoes, so in the explanation given above, only one shoe is leading and the three others are trailing. In practice this means that your great big heavy Rover, only has two really efficient shoes trying to stop it when reversing (one on each side of the rear axle) hence the difference in performance.

A cheap and effective upgrade is to put front backing plates and brakes on the rear axle,

Cheers Charlie

Thanks Charlie,

Though if you upgrade the back brakes to front brakes, do you then have to do something to the master cylinder to change the proportion of front/ rear brake power?

Cheers,

ben

Originally Posted by Ben SIII

Thanks Charlie,

Though if you upgrade the back brakes to front brakes, do you then have to do something to the master cylinder to change the proportion of front/ rear brake power?

Cheers,
ben

No you use the same master cylinder, however you must put RH front on the LH rear and LH front on RH rear. Otherwise you will end up with eight leading shoes and no trailing shoes and virtually no braking in reverse.

He front/rear proportioning is obtained by the relative inefficiency of what's now the rear "double trailing" shoes.

It is quite acceptable to use 2 1/2" front brakes (4 cyl 109) on the rear with 3" on the front, but a friend has 3" wide front and rear with excellent results.

Further improvement can be obtained by increasing the boost assistance with a larger booster diaphragm.