Drum brakes are essentially extinct on new cars today—save for a few budget-minded holdouts like the Ford Focus 1.0-liter. But for nearly a century, they were the standard system of choice on nearly ...

Disc brakes resemble hand brakes on a bicycle, where pulling on the brake lever forces a plier-like device to squeeze rubber blocks against the rim of the wheel to stop the car. Drum brakes are a ...

Want to know how all the complex systems work in your car? Turn to these fantastic videos made by the carmakers themselves. Chevrolet produced many of these great instructional films in the 1930s.

Even if you are not that passionate about cars, but you drive regularly, you still need to know some basics about brakes. Yes, you press that pedal next to the accelerator, but what exactly happens ...

The hardest part of disassembling the brakes is usually removing the drum. Some drums and most backing plates have inspection slots near the bottom (sometimes covered with a rubber plug or a steel ...

Drum brakes, shown in Figure 14-5, are the oldest type of brakes still on the road. Their main advantage is that they require less hydraulic pressure to stop your vehicle because the brake shoes tend ...

Classic Mustang drum brakes have never been big performers. Even when these cars were new, their drum brakes were problematic, noisy, and often pulled badly. Fade was terrible under hard braking, ...

Most modern cars stopped using drum brakes years ago, adopting disc brakes for their improved performance and heat resistance. Those sound like pretty good reasons, so you'd think they'd be just as ...

Drum brakes are an OG technology that have been around almost as long as cars have. First developed in 1899, this style of brake can be found on some of the very first automotive prototypes built by ...

Back in the '60s, drum brakes didn't seem that bad since most cars were hobbled with the same lack of stopping prowess. Fast forward a few decades and it matters a bit more that it takes you an ...

As you can see in Figure 15-3, you have to remove a bunch of stuff to get to a drum brake. The steps here explain how to do so and what to look for when you finally get to your brakes. Caution: ...