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Lobby GM to make all disc brakes standard

8K views 45 replies 16 participants last post by  weimerrj 
#1 ·
I don't want to get into a discussion about which brakeing system stops the best. The simple fact is only cars with drum rear brakes seem to constantly have park brake issues. So why would you put 2 different types of parts on basically the same car? Other countries use the all disc system exclusively and have no park brake issues. If the park brake is out so is the foot brake and this is not good. Women, who are usually not mechanically minded drive these cars and could get into trouble if they don't notice the leaver getting higher, some guys as well. Please for peace of mind make the best possible available reliable braking system standard for all models.
 
#3 ·
If that is the only reason to charge more for a car then shame on GM for putting safety at a cost to make more profit. Have a look at the Holden website and see what different prices get you in your Cruze, 4 engine choices, 3 body styles and several trim levels. All have disc brakes and the Diesel and the 1.6T SRI models have bigger ones. Not a single consistent park brake problem among them. Oh by the way it is a GM company, wouldn't you think they would offer US citizens the best?
 
#5 ·
Hate to be an oddball, but I am, would much prefer if my 2LT had drums on the rear, far cheaper to repair and work just as well.

How about having to lay out 240-600 bucks for two new disk calipers, even if you have the brains and tools to repair them, won't sell you any replacement parts, and they become a pile of rust. Then with drums, have a much greater surface area for positive parking.

Just checked the rear drums, well 18 months ago on my 04 Caviliar before turning it over to my stepdaughter. Still original, just needed some cleaning and lubrication with practically no shoe wear. You do need some brains as to how to adjust them however. Still only six inches on the parking brake.

With the disks, wife still asks why I work the parking brake level at a traffic light. Forgets, feel the service brake pedal getting a bit low. With drums, this is done for you whenever you back up. And if you need new cylinders, only around ten bucks.

Most ideal would be calipers for the service and shoes for the parking brakes. Supra has those, shoes for parking never wear out, only use those for parking. And the calipers are inherently self adjusting. None of that ratcheting stuff that binds up.

And whoever said, salt saves lives, have a ten foot pole I would love to jam up someplace. And very few professional mechanics don't even know how to do a proper brake job let alone do an oil change. So if you want it done right, have to do it yourself.
 
#8 ·
Most ideal would be calipers for the service and shoes for the parking brakes. Supra has those, shoes for parking never wear out, only use those for parking. And the calipers are inherently self adjusting. None of that ratcheting stuff that binds up.

And whoever said, salt saves lives, have a ten foot pole I would love to jam up someplace. And very few professional mechanics don't even know how to do a proper brake job let alone do an oil change. So if you want it done right, have to do it yourself.
This is what my 1999 Holden Commodore had, and after 13 years and 250,000km park brake was original and so were rear rotors. Front rotors were replaced at about 200,000km (warped). New pads about every 3 years or so front and every 5 years rear. Pads cost $22 rear $24 front all four could be changed using standard jack in less than an hour. Salt is not an issue anywhere in Australia, not even in snowy areas.
 
#6 · (Edited)
Copied from edmunds.com

http://www.edmunds.com/chevrolet/cruze/2013/

In Edmunds brake testing, a Cruze LTZ stopped from 60 mph in 122 feet, a slightly better-than-average distance for this class of car. Even with its fuel-economy-friendly tires, the Cruze Eco stopped in just about the same distance.

Eco also has "drums" and "eco tires".

IMO this is not a safety issue...
This is more of a my car doesn't look as cool as yours because I have drums :/



Sent from AutoGuide.com App
 
#7 ·
To me this is a "I'm a self entitled person who feels I should be able to tell companies what products they should sell me with something other than my wallet" mentality.

Don't like drum brakes? Don't buy a car with drum brakes. I had zero stopping issues on my Eco with drum brakes. Yeah I'd have preferred discs. But I don't think I have the right to tell a company what they should be able to sell. If I don't like what they sell, I just won't buy it. Pure and simple.
 
#9 ·
Drums are better for fuel economy (less friction when not in use), last forever, and are dirt cheap to repair.

In a non-performance application, they are not a bad choice.
 
#10 ·
I/members of my family have had cars with drum brakes for YEARS, and the only problems have been with sticking disc calipers on the front and/or 4-wheel disc cars.

One of these cars is going on 12 years old and never had a brake problem; the other, 40 and has needed rebuilt calipers several times in its life while the drums have needed basically nothing. The 4-wheel disc cars haven't been nearly as problem-free.

They stop fine, and the parking brakes work fine (if adjusted). In fact, many of the 4-wheel disc cars have drum parking brakes built into the rear discs as a fail-safe.
 
#11 ·
My original point was that mechanically poor drivers seem to have park brake issues which means the foot brake is not as efficient as it should be, therefore not as safe. It is all well and good to have air bags everywhere but avoiding an accident in the first place is also important. I know lots of people on this forum are quite capable of getting good performance from drum brakes, but what about school kids and younger drivers who aren't as capable, surely they need to be as safe as possible?
 
#12 ·
The rear brakes provide very little of your stopping power (just like a bike). The rear drums do work, even if misadjusted though - the pedal travel will just be a little further.

Even driving my Cruze with 1000 miles, before I knew about adjusting the drums, I had to do a panic stop in traffic. Stomp that brake pedal and all 4 brakes work just fine and it stops in a helluva hurry. I've repeated that same kind of panic stop a few times and avoided accidents that others in front of me couldn't.
 
#16 ·
Good luck with that, it has purely to do with dollars and cents. Drums are cheaper so they go on the budget cars/trucks. And on almost every new car out there the parking brake is a drum brake inside the rotor so i don't see what you are really gaining. You still have drum brakes for the parking brake. Most issues people have with drum brakes is they never adjust them as they wear out so you go to pull the parking brake and you don't make good contact between the shoes and the drums.
 
#17 ·
If the park brake is out so is the foot brake and this is not good.
This is a completely false statement. The foot brake and parking brake are actuated completely differently. The park brake is mechanical and controlled with springs and cables, the foot brake is hydraulic. You can cut the parking brake cables off and it won't affect your foot brake one bit.
 
#19 ·
Cutting the cable is a completely different problem to brake shoes needing adjustment. When the park brake lever gets high adjusting the shoes brings it down again, thus they are connected from a wear point of view. If the leaver is high the shoes are out thus affecting brake performance. How much braking does the rear do when car is filled to capacity? 20% has to be a guess and only for a driver only car.

If you want to find out the difference the rear brakes make try backing them off all the way and drive on a dirt road, I have had this happen to me and I had to pull the park brake up before applying the foot brake as without this the front wheels just locked up and no stopping or steering worked, really scary at the time. ABS would help but not much.
 
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#18 ·
i will say this, i do have plans to upgrade to disc, but not becuase i feel that the drum brakes are bad... on the contrary, these brakes STOP THE CAR. i have been 3 situations where the brakes performed well beyond what was expected... one was 45-0 on a down hill in about 2 car lengths ( a bit under). another was wet roads from 35-0 in 1.5 car lengths ( no skidding at all).

personally i like my rear drums, they just tend to fade a bit when i drive because i live on a mountian so they do not cool as fast as disc, but still they perform great.
 
#20 ·
The simple fact is only cars with drum rear brakes seem to constantly have park brake issues.
Completely opposite of what many see in the northern US states. Rear disc brakes make mechanics LOTS of money in repair work.

So I call your "fact" to be just anecdotal evidence.

Class 8 road tractors weighting in at 160,000+lbs still use all wheel drum brakes.

GM in recent years past has removed disc brakes from the rear of trucks and went back to drums due to rust/corrosion problems.

Drum brakes using the actual service linings for the parking brake have more stopping power than a disc with small internal parking shoe, comparing only parking brake function.
 
#21 · (Edited)
Completely opposite of what many see in the northern US states. Rear disc brakes make mechanics LOTS of money in repair work.
Do the front disc brakes give an equal amount of trouble? If not why not? The rear drum in disc system has been the best system I have ever had on a car for reliability. 13 years and 250,000 km with only pad changes and original drum linings are hard to beat. This was in a RWD Commodore V6 3800 5 speed manual. My son has a 5.7 6m Wagon with the same brakes and also no problems. Our cars have alloy calipers that may be the difference?

By the way I hold a heavy vehicle driving license so I know about truck brakes, It is difficult to set up a disc brake where the air holds the brakes off so the vehicle can move and to automatically apply the brakes if the air system fails.
 
#27 ·
There are two ways for parking brakes to be out of adjustment. The first, and apparently the most common in the Cruze, is for the rear brakes to be out of adjustment to the extent that they are working at all. The second is for the parking brake cables to be too long, either by stretching or by not being adjusted properly. Yes, cables do stretch. The Cruze supports separate adjustment of the rear drums and the parking brake cable.
 
#28 ·
To my knowledge and experience all drum brake cars do this, The only exception to this was a 1976 Subaru wagon I owned which had the handbrake on the front disc brakes, and without an internal drum but on the calipers.
 
#29 ·
Brake cables stretch on all cars regardless of what kind of brakes, the difference with drum brakes is the shoes are wearing at the same time so it becomes more prominent. You can only bend/stretch metal so many times before it no longer goes back to it's original shape. That's all that is going on with the parking brake. When you pull the lever up you are putting tension on the steel cables that go to the brake shoes, and like any other spring metal they eventually lose their bounce back.
 
#31 ·
You can only bend/stretch metal so many times before it no longer goes back to it's original shape.
That is not totally correct. Non-ferrous metals will break eventually after being deformed regardless of how little they bend. Ferrous metals can be deformed without any adverse affects as long as you do not exceed its yield strength.

Nobody has mentioned the brake dust that gathers in drum brakes, or the pulsating pedal when the drum goes out of round.
Disc brakes have the same issues. They don't suffer from out of round but they do suffer from thickness variation that causes pedal pulsation.
 
#30 ·
Nobody has mentioned the brake dust that gathers in drum brakes, or the pulsating pedal when the drum goes out of round. But enough of whose is best, the point is that Australia is mostly dust and heat outside of the major cities and USA in the North is cold and Ice so obviously we call things according to our experience and all disc brakes are superior in our driving conditions. It is up to you to decide which is best in your turf. Happy Cruzing everyone.
 
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#32 ·
There is a very simple reason cables will stretch - they aren't solid. Look at any cable and you'll see it's braided from smaller cables, down to wires about one mm or less in diameter. The reason cables stretch is nothing more than these smaller strands seating in as the cable is placed under tension. It's a slow process but it occurs with all stranded cables, regardless of the material.
 
#33 ·
Honestly after reading this, you have to understand a few things.

Yes, they're drums. Yes, they may not look "as cool"
They may not be as "performance orientated" as you'd have hoped.

BUT:
-The Chevy Cruze isn't a sports car
-Rear drums work (proven) roughly the same as rear discs
-Your stopping power comes from primarily your front disc brakes
-There are aftermarket ceramic brakes, and other options to make your rear drums "better" than oem.
-Replacing rear drums can be annoying to replace, but it's a straightforward procedure it's a dome, with an inn-erred pad that activates by just a simple spring assembly (old and proven tech)
-cheaper to service drums, than caliper/rotors/pads.

Safety issues that you had reported are easily either chocked up to the giant recall they're having now, or something else.
 
#34 ·
Got on gmpartsdirect, don't even show a parts diagram for what is required to convert, and several of the parts you know are needed are not even listed. But what are, would be a small fortune to convert.

With all the pros listed for rear disk brakes, maybe instead of complaining about them, should brag instead.

Ha, ha, my car does have disk brakes, ha, ha, and yours don't!

But this is based on over 33 years of experience in dealing with rear disk brakes. Unlike regular calipers that are inherently self adjusting, these require esoteric knowledge on how to operate the parking brake for adjustment. And the mechanism itself is exposed to road hazards, not a closed system like standard calipers. When the pad gap increases, and the brake level returns to the home position, a dog slips into a ratchet gear and turns and exposed screw to close the gap. That in a couple of years would be a pile of rust.

One thing I would say in favor of the Cruze, they finally plated the parts. But see on my levers, surface rust is starting to appear. Just a quick glance at the plating equipment? But my next job is to clean the external surfaces and hand paint them. Removing any caliper also requires specialized equipment to active the the ABS for proper bleeding. Unless you know how to work around that.

Also see a new ABS costs 1/20th the price of a new Cruze, just for two components you can barely find in the car. But did fine a rear disk caliper rebuilding kit for 20 bucks, least I think its for the rear calipers.

But just for a quick price comparison, and not knowing if the ABS has to be changes as well, these to have to be tuned for the car, along with the rest of the parts. If you really want rear disk brakes, think it would be cheaper to trade your Cruze off for one that has them.

For me a trade off, wanting a power driver's seat, better radio, a spare tire, leather interior with electrical heated seats, a thousand buck option with a 200 buck discount. They tossed in the rear disk brakes in free. But expecting a huge return for service. Doing this for the dealers with all these dealer installed options.

What's next on their list? Instead of giving us a discount, will be getting worthless points like everyone else is doing.
 
#35 ·
Hmm.. Rear drums stop the car, and can last the life of it if it's a manual transmission. I don't think more needs to be said. As rear calipers age they start to stick and wear pads out faster. Drum brakes need to be adjusted where caliper pins need to be lubricated if the brakes are on for an extended period of time. Both braking systems work well it's all personal preference to what you like. I prefer the look of disc brakes but I love the longevity of drums. I've done the swap and I'll never do it again, just not worth it. I don't particularly care if a car comes with disks or drums to me it's pretty much the same thing.
 
#36 · (Edited)
Regardless of their benefits (rear disc brakes vs. rear drum brakes), attempting to persuade GM about anything is like "...tugging on Superman's cape..." or "...pi$$ing into the wind..." -- it just AIN'T gonna happen people -- GM has their (best intere$t) reasons and customer input is avoided like a plague.

The bottom line is NOT your safety, but rather their (GM's) co$t-differential -- i.e.: drum brakes are cheaper, which allows drum-braked models to be lower priced.
 
#40 ·
The bottom line is NOT your safety, but rather their (GM's) co$t-differential -- i.e.: drum brakes are cheaper, which allows drum-braked models to be lower priced.
This is the very reason I don't understand why 2 types of brakes are installed, if lets say half the Cruze cars have drums and half have discs, wouldn't it be more cost effective to make them all the same as this would mean larger numbers of whichever system they used the per unit price would come down?
 
#38 ·
This was your initial argument Aussie, that drums were unsafe (especially for women, which I also don't agree with but you are entitled to your opinion. I don't think anyone here will question discs as an overall better set-up, but hardly a reason to banish them from existence. You can make the same argument for the thousands of people driving disc brake cars that are down to the backing plates because they never check them. Regardless of the set-up ignorant drivers are the issue, not the mechanics.
 
#39 ·
Discus = a round thingee that Olympic athletes throw at each other instead of throwing a 'pointy' javelin spear?!?
 
#41 ·
Going back to the 70's, took GM over ten years to develop rear disks calipers to keep your vehicle from rolling down a hill with the transmission in neutral and the foot operated parking brake fully applied.

Even in the owners manual suggested with the engine running, power brakes, apply high pressure to the service brakes, then high pressure to the parking brake pedal. But even doing this, vehicle would still roll down a hill, and not of much a hill at that.

Drum brakes required far less pedal pressure, if it wasn't for power assist, wouldn't even have disk brakes. Even a woman could drive a 7,500 pound 37 Caddy without power assist. Was a cam type of design, so forward motion would turn the shoes for to aid in the stopping power. But granted trying to make a fast stop in reverse took a lot more pressure.

So the point about a woman, assuming a small woman, know some around here that tip the scales at over 400, let's be politically correct and just say a small person. Would have far more difficulty stopping a vehicle with disk brakes if power assist were lost.

Is an advantage of owning a 2LT with four wheel disks and five spoke wheels. Can check the pad wear just by sticking my hand through the spokes.

Holding power of the Cruze rear disks is vastly improved over previous versions. With not too much of a slope, trust them, and with a MT, can leave the gear in neutral. That way if someone bumps me, don't have to be concerned about breaking a gear tooth in the transmission.

Try to do this with your AT.
 
#42 ·
I have auto in my diesel and it holds fine on the park brake, I have a reasonable slope on my driveway and when I check my letterbox it does not load up park like it would if the brake slipped. You have reminded me of something when I had rear drums on a previous car you could lock the wheels going forward with the PB and the car would still roll backwards and the PB required a further pull. The Caddy must of had 2 leading brake shoes, newer cars had a leading and trailing shoe which worked as well in reverse as forward. My first car had the caddy setup but after that I went from a Morris to a Holden and while the all drum setup was better I still had to spend quite a bit on the brakes to get it to stop on a racetrack. Fixing the brakes caused oil surge problems, another expensive fix.
 
#43 ·
Disc brakes are hands down better for a racetrack, there is no debate there. Drums are good for one or two panic type stops but they also hold a lot of heat. In the scenario I agree drums could possibly be dangerous, but then again they aren't intended for that kind of use. You will never see a ZR-1 with drum brakes. But for John Q public, 99.99% of people will never know the difference.
 
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