In my 50 years of experience as an ASE and General Motors master technician and automotive technology instructor, I’ve found ...

POWER INSTEAD OF HAND BRAKES; THE OLD CAR-STOPPING DEVICES ARE NOW USELESS. Tentative Trial of New Systems -- Fractions of Seconds Often Important -- Momentum of Vehicles.

Disc brakes function much like the hand brakes on a bicycle. The rotor — a flat steel disc about the size of a dinner plate — turns with the wheels. When you brake, ...

When the switch is pressed, electronic motors activate, pressing braking pads into your rear brakes. Despite the inclusion of an electronic component, the general effect of an EPB is exactly the ...

Step one: Gun it. Step two: Yank up on the handbrake and crank the wheel with your left hand from 2 o’clock down to 7. Step three: Feel the car whip around, bring handbrake down, gun it again.

Drum brakes, on the other hand, use a wheel cylinder to push brake shoes against a drum, creating friction to slow your wheels. Regardless of the type of brake system your car has, ...

Electric hand brakes can operate as an emergency backup, but in cases like the one described above, they would be useless. So, the mechanic has a point here.

A case is made out for the independent type with hand-operated front brakes and foot-operated rear brakes on the grounds of efficiency, trustworthiness, simplicity, weight and cost.