Drilled Drums?????

[340demon72]

Check this out. Claims to be a decades old process that greatly helps drum brakes to dissipate heat, and eject dust and water! First link describes process and advantages, second link shows the process.

Drilled Drums

http://www.chtopping.com/CustomRod4/examples1/examples1.htm

Watcha think?

 

[jos51700]

That's a great way to create stress risers to allow the formation of cracks. Cast iron loves being perforated to weaken it.

Drums suck for stopping, and for airflow, and drilling them in that fashion does little to resolve either issue. Switch to discs if you're worried about it.

 

[72bluNblu]

I can't see those tiny little holes being all that good for doing any of the things they said. The tiny holes shown would plug up with dust, making them pretty useless for venting dust or water. But they would create stress risers, so cracking could definitely be an issue especially considering holes like that were never part of the design (unlike some rotors that are designed with holes for heat dissipation). As for weight savings, they obviously haven't picked up a finned drum for an 11x2.5" brake set up, those things weigh a ton. Or accounted for modern aluminum calipers, etc.

Seems like a lot of work for possibly a small improvement, and I'm being generous. Even drilled disks have fallen out of favor as of late, with slotted disks showing equal or better performance without the cracking issues that can come up.

 

[brian6pac]

I would rather drill holes in the backing plate and add a scoop to force air into the shoes and back out to pull out the dust and heat.

 

[72bluNblu]

I would rather drill holes in the backing plate and add a scoop to force air into the shoes and back out to pull out the dust and heat.

I've seen that done, mostly on motorcycle drums on cafe racers. There were even factory motorcycle backing plates that had air scoops to cool the brakes, Triumph did that for awhile.

But really if you were going to invest that kind of time into cooling your drum brakes you should really just switch to disks. You'd get better cooling and you'd still have brakes when they got wet.

 

[340demon]

when my demon 340 was new it had drum brakes had trouble stop on short drag strips did not want to go to disk because NHRA said no with out power brakes too much money to convert so went with velvatouch lining like what was used on big rigs, improved stopping dist. and when they get hot still had great stopping dist. and still can lock all 4 wheels. the car has 8500 miles on it and the shoes and drums look almost new. with the new lining they have today there should be a lining out there that work as well

 

[lsm360]

I'd rather have the Police drums that are finned like I have on my Dippy to help with heat. It actually stops pretty dang well.

 

[72bluNblu]

I'd rather have the Police drums that are finned like I have on my Dippy to help with heat. It actually stops pretty dang well.

I run the finned 11x2.5" drums on all of my cars at the moment. Never had an issue with them overheating, but they weigh a ton. The fins do work, all that extra surface area helps heat transfer substantially. They work well with the later B/R 11.75" rotors up front too.