I feel that there's such a thing as having too much brake, especially if it disrupts the balance - if you have to threshold-brake to keep one end from locking up long before the other end is contributing much to the effort, you could actually end up with LONGER stopping distances. I've found this to be the case when driving a Bug on wet pavement - IMO you're better off overall with stock brakes all around than you are with disks on the front only. The front-only disk "upgrade" should shorten your dry-pavement stopping distance, true, but at what cost? If they lock up prematurely in the wet, they aren't stopping you and they aren't letting you steer either. With stock bug drum brakes in good condition you can lock up all four (stock-sized) tires on dry pavement with a big leg, so without more tire there's really no point in more brake anyway. The operative phrase there is "in good condition" - of course if you compare disks to drums in typical sorry shape the disks are going to outperform them.
There are other incremental upgrades for the rear as well, which will help to restore the brake balance. On `68-up cars you can replace the 17.46mm wheel cylinders with those intended for the front of a Standard Beetle that are 22.05mm. You can also get metallic linings made up, but they tend to wear the drums rapidly and aren't very effective when they're cold; "semi-metallic" are a compromise that resist heat fade better than stock yet still work OK cold. My son and a friend of his each have `77 Beetles that have had the fronts changed over to the `66-`71 III calipers; one has bone-stock Type III rears and the other has Type I with semi-met lining on the forward shoe, organic on the rearward shoe, and 22.05mm wheel cylinders. Both work quite well; I doubt you'd be able to tell which was which from the driver's seat. The Type I has a significant unsprung weight advantage, too... --- Sharkey's Garage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hot VWs did a rather in-depth review on brake kit > installations about ten > years ago and how they performed with regards to a > stock VW Beetle. First > they measured 60-0 mph braking distances with a > stock 4-wheel drum set-up. > Then they converted the fronts to discs and > retested, resulting in what I > can remember being a 20-25% decrease in braking > distance. Finally, they > upgraded the rears to discs as well and got maybe > another 10%. They didn't > test a Type III rear drum upgrade as Marc suggested ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/ _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
