Motherfucking shit. I just drove about 300ft around a neighborhood and then a little out of the neighborhood to a light before I noticed my e-brake was still on. I knew it felt different, like fucked up.

I smelled the tires/brakes burning. I'm guessing that ain't good.

Life lesson kids: don't drive high.

I drove at least 4 miles with my e brake partly on (Front wheel drive) and have no noticeable problems. I remember getting out of my car and smelling a the same smell you described, but still had no problems afterward.

If you're worried just test your e brake up and down a vacant road, if it works normal I'd say you're good to go.

Ya my car is front wheel drive too. So this will not affect my brakes but maybe affect my ebrake functionality?

It would be the brakes, not the tires, and theres a good chance nothing is wrong.

Put the car on an incline where you would normally trust the e brake to hold it, and give it a burl. If it works, good.

Just don't try the e brake while moving, I assume they are drums in your case, if they have overheated, I guess they may have warped slightly (I don't think its likely), so it may cause a rough ride if you do.

An interesting thing about drum brakes is they (as far as I know all of them that aren't archaic...) have an automatic adjusting mechanism, so even as you wear out the pads, a mechanical device will move them closer to the drums to account for it. This 'device' usually 'checks' for wear if you park on a hill with the rear of the car downhill and the drums stopping the car (ie the drums stop the car from reversing). At which point they will adjust as nescessary.

I seem to be in a 'make painfully long posts' mood, i hope no one minds.

All it probably did was accelerate normal wear on your brake linings.

I was in a car with someone that did the same thing. Except they drove it about 3 miles. Everything was fine until about a thousand miles later.

Plan on replacing them a little sooner.

Nereth: All drum brakes are archaic.

Parking brakes generally just hold a car still. That doesn't wear them out, so they tend to last forever. I've seen a lot more broken cables than worn-out shoes.

Well, it was in for an inspection a while ago and the guy said it'd need new breaks by the end of summer so they're getting replaced anyway.

And my car's kinda old '95 VW Passat (133k miles) so I guess since drum breaks are old it might have 'em.

I'll try to stop it on an incline the next time I drive it.

the design is, the brakes arent.

Older drum brakes didn't have the self adjusting mechanism. Assuming he has a car from this half of the last century though, I think he will be fine.

1) He probably meant the actual brakes you use when you put your foot down on the pedal. There are (usually) separate brakes for the e brake. Ask him about this.

2) Your car is not old. When I said archaic, I meant before the 1960s.

3) Even the newest (ie current model) cars still, on the most part, use drum brakes for the e brake. Its just easier that way.

Don't worry, I used to do it on my MG all the time. I couldn't actually tell the difference until the brake fluid boiled (that'll teach me to use shitty DOT3 fluid...) and I had to push the pedal right to the floor to get any response from it. Your drums probably won't have warped in only 800 yards, but give them a check anyway. You can get them skimmed but it's probably cheaper just to replace them if they are warped.

fixed

I don't know about you guys, but I have a little light that comes on when my parking brake is on.

It's on the instrument cluster which I keep a pretty close eye on(especially in the first several minutes of driving) since that's where the guages and idiot lights live.

You're probably ok, as long as your parking brake still works and you don't have any abnormal noise or vibration.



I don't know about your cars over there, but over here the parking brake system is operated by cable(redundancy in case of fusked up hydraulic system). So in order for the brake fluid to get warmed up too bad you'd have to have some tire melting temperatures going on with just the parking brake actuated.

DOT 3 brake fluid has a pretty high boiling point, so as long as it's not old and saturated with water(it's hygroscopic) boiling isn't something to worry about except for cars that see serious track use.

^ I don't have a warning light, all the cars I've owned have been built before 1972

Yeah handbrakes are operated by cables over here too, but it's the same pads that are operated by both the footbrake and the handbrake, so the brake cylinder (the little thing that expands and pushes the shoes out into the drum - might be called something else in the US/Oz) will still heat up if you drive around with the handbrake slightly on (which I once did for about 8 miles, because it was only slightly on I didn't notice any lack in performance). This is when I had just bought the car so maybe the fluid had been sitting in there for years without being changed, which might explain why it boiled so quickly. Anyway, nowadays I use DOT5, you can't normally find DOT3 in local motor factors anymore anyway seeing as hardly any cars use it any more.

Also I think handbrakes were designed to be cable operated because it's much easier to have constant pressure with a cable rather than with a hydraulic system. Although I guess the emergency hydraulic failure thing is kinda important too. Maybe they chose it for both reasons.

Not sure how the new electric handbrakes work. A lot of cars released in the last couple of years have them. Seems a bit dangerous to me... if you have a catastrophic engine bay fire then both your hydraulic and electric systems could go... with a normal manual you could just shift into first and let the rotational inertia of the engine slow you down, but in cars with paddle shift, you're stuffed.

I've never heard the constant pressure thing, but I have heard 'added redundancy' in case the hydraulics systems fail all the time.

And yeah, an electric handbrake would scare me too. I wish people would stop being pansies and just live with the damn mechanical stuff. And how about brake by wire? Apparently one of the reasons was because people didn't like the juddering of the pedal when ABS is on. IF ABS IS ON, THERE ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT!

Mechanical systems are so much reliable than electrical systems. Honestly.

^ yep. One day, on my lovely old MG, the accelerator cable came loose. So I got a pair of pliers, pulled it through the twin carb linkage, and tightened up the bolt. Took about 3 minutes, max, and most of that time was finding the right socket to fit the bolt.

On a by-wire accelerator, you'd have to put the damn thing in a garage for at least a week.

Same thing with my stepdad's BMW. The thermostat went on that. Now with my car, it's a 20 minute job. Unscrew hose clips going to thermostat, undo bolts on thermostat, wipe up all the coolant you spilt, put on a new gasket and thermostat, torque down bolts, put hoses back on and top up radiator.

His car took an experienced mechanic (this guy is so good he can basically recognise anything by sound alone) at least 6 hours to replace the thermostat on the Beemer. Just because it's overly complex.

Oh and about the constant pressure thing, I think it was when they were designing the very first cars, it wasn't good for their poor hydraulic systems to have pressure on them for days and days on end. I guess the feature carried on into more modern designs.

I heart how easy it is to repair old cars.

I had a look at a second gen camaro sitting outside a performance shop today, immaculate body, and since the guy selling it worked in said performance shop, presumably awesome internals. But he had gone down south so I couldn't ask about it.

He wanted 20 grand for it though. I would rather buy a shitty cuda for that money than that immaculate camaro, simply because, to me, cudas are just so god damn sexy.

Hey that reminds me, I saw a Camaro in the UK the other day. I think it was second generation. Looked very cool parked next to all these German executive cars.

Oh and my stepdad is building a new garage, solely to house the 190sl he's going to buy which will eventually become my 190sl

http://www.madle.org/og05mb190sl58.jpg

I've been trying to convince him to get a BMW 507 instead but he's not listening...

http://www.bmwworld.com/pics/vintage/15435_1024.jpg

or maybe an MGTD. Half the price of the two above, and it's British

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi....mg.td.arp.jpg

meh, its ok I guess
FUCKING AWESOME

ew.

Come on, you can't say you wouldn't want a TD. How absolutely amazingly fun would that be to drive? And only £15,000 compared to at least £30,000 for the other two. And RHD. The only thing that's missing is having the big chromed exhaust pipes coming out of the side of the bonnet

Out of all of them, though, I'd probably have the BMW.

EDIT - I guess the price guide in the back of Practical Classis Magazine is a bit out of date. It says a reasonable 507 can be picked up for £35k, and a mint one for £60k. I just looked around on the internet for a bit and it seems a good one will cost at least £150k. A bit out of my stepdad's price range. Bugger.

I dont like old OLD cars, just old cars.

they must have coke bottle styling, dammit!

Hehe alright.

what about
Duesenberg
http://www.100-jahre-sportwagen.de/i...28_01_1024.jpg

or
1935 MG roadster
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...g_roadster.jpg

or Bugatti Atlantic
http://www.ritzsite.net/Bugatti_T57/...c_1937_r3q.jpg

or Devaux
http://www.devauxcars.com/images/pics/media_004.jpg

I would kill every single person in this thread for a 2 mile spin in that 507.

+1







.

1) I love the exhaust out the sides... as a matter of fact, the engine I'm designing may have to have the intake runners curving out of the hood and then back in, above the heads, since there is minimal clearance.

2) too small and unpowerful looking

3) holy crap is that a dorsal fin???

4) For gods sake...

I really like the art deco style of the Duesenberg. The way that it looks like a cross between a plane, a train and a boat is awesome. And I really love the little chrome mouldings that come out of the running board and up the rear wing

it's so of-its-time. You can clearly see that it was designed by the same kind of people that made

this
http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery.../P30413995.jpg

and this
http://www.travelpictures.co.uk/TP/F...thbeach-pp.JPG

and this
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/...yscraper_1.jpg

and this
http://www.blueheronwoods.com/pictur...-Mah-Ch350.jpg

not sure if you're into architecture or design, but I did design technology for A-Level and it was probably the most enjoyable subject I've ever done. I couldn't carry it on to degree level though because I didn't do a full A-Level in art (I did one year of geography and then realised how boring it was and changed to art)

nyeh, dont care that much about designing how shit looks, just so long as they work.

Im fucking pissed, I made a bigass post about that guy plugging RWDs from the other forum and I just accidentally closed the damn window.

Now I have to type it again.

If you had an engine fire big enough that it would affect the hydraulic as well as electric brakes I'm sure you'd pull over in a pretty good hurry instead of driving for several more minutes that it would take to completely destroy your brake system.

But I agree electric brakes are just a selling point for gadget happy people and a way to add yet more complexity for new cars. But one good thing about them is that you can add a theft prevention system that will actually work.

hahaha before you get your stage one learners liscence in western australia, you have to do a theory test on road rules and to a lesser extent, car basics.

One of the questions was 'if you are driving and a fire breaks out in the engine bay, what should you do?'

no shit, one of the answers was:

'accelerate to attempt to blow out the flames'

Some people amaze me with their lack of common sense.

I hit some decent hills between work and my house and with the temps rising lately I've seen alot of people with huge amounts of steam pouring out from their hoods and yet they are still giving it all it's got trying to get over the top. Pulling over for 20 minutes would probably cool it down enough to try again or atleast get a few more miles down the road for another break. Instead, the idiots keep pushing and end up transforming their engine into a humongous paper weight.

yeah our old van used to go through so much damn radiator water. We carried a couple 3 litre milk bottles of water in the back so that we could top it up every 20 ks.

Would you believe every time we took it to the mechanics', they insisted nothing was wrong with it? The problem was eventually fixed when a truck changed lanes and cut it off while going around 40 under the limit (the truck had only just merged onto the road), and the van got sold for scrap.

Yeah in the UK we have a theory test. I remember one of the questions was 'you have an argument before driving. You are very angry. What should you do?

1. drive anyway, your anger will make you concentrate
2. have an alcoholic drink to calm you down
3. calm down before you start driving'

I'm not even fucking kidding. The theory test is so incredibly easy. They make up for it by having a stupidly pedantic practical test - it's not about being a good driver, it's about jumping through their stupid hoops.

Our theory test has easy parts (give it some throttle and blow out the flames!), but it also is annoying. I only got 1 out of the 30 questions wrong, because they used the word 'overtake' to simply mean 'drive past', as opposed to pulling out from behind and then passing, so I just got fucking confused.

We've got this shitty hazard perception thing too where you watch a video and click the mouse when you see a potential hazard, but it's really badly designed so you can see a hazard, and then click once, but if you click slightly too early then you can miss the hazard altogether and fail the test. So to make sure, you've gotta click when you see it, then click like two seconds later, but then if you click too much, you fail the test too.

holy shit man, we have the exact same thing, even has the same name.

I've finished 24.5 of my 25 hours, just pretty much gotta wait till I'm 17 now, then I take the hazard perception test, then got my provisionals.

From the 4 practice questions we get, its pretty fucking dodgy. It actually shits me at how illogical the q's are. I wont go into it, but suffice it to say that in one of the questions, you drive past a turn with big yellow warning signs, but if you click, you fail, because in actual fact you are meant to slow down for a turn that comes later in the test. But you don't bloody well know theres a second turn coming so you click for the one with THE BIG DAMN WARNING SIGNS.

My driving test was a 10 question multiple choice test and I drove a state cop to the store to get a soda and back.

The whole process took about an hour.

Just thought I'd rub that in a little bit.

It should be fine. If you notice any braking problems the drums might be glazed.

Yeah well... we have corners, shut up!

I think it's funny how alot of people are under the assumption that the whole US is nothing but flat straight roads with gentle curves for intersections and how every european country has roads that double back on themselves every 1/2 mile or so.

We've got quite a variety of terrain over here. Everything from interstates that go on for a hundred miles perfectly flat and straight to mountain roads that make crotch rocket riders pucker up so much that it takes a week to pull the seat fabric out of their crack.

*glares*

Bastard. I had 20 hours of lessons and a 45 minute test which was probably the most nervewracking thing I've ever done. Still passed first time though. Most people need like 30 hours of lessons, apparently, but I'd been driving offroad at my friend's farm and my mum's car up and down the car park, so I had good car control, it was just the roadcraft that I needed to learn.

Oh and about the corners in America debate - everywhere in Ireland is the tiniest little twisty roads. Looking at my big map of the British Isles on my wall, they have about 70 miles of motorway in the whole country. Everything else is little twisty roads that are barely big enough to fit two cars down (the kind of roads that I like!)