[suburbangeorge]

Originally Posted by jimjaz

Hello Suburbangeorge,

I do not have anything against power brakes other than (a potential for) lock-up. Some people will have nothing but. I prefer the look of a non-power brake setup under the hood- no gargantuan booster drum to look at or get in the way of any maintenance that one might need to do. For those that choose power brakes, there is plenty of room under the hood for a brake booster.

I like the control that you have with non-power (disc) brakes. As I mentioned in my original post, a panic stop can cause your brakes to suddenly lock up, and without the booster, locking up the brakes is, simply put, not as easy to do.

I don't need to talk to anybody about what parts I need, because I am quite pleased with what I already have, and just thought that I would share my experience with others that may be looking for input and others' experiences.

My "experience" originally came from researching and reading about automotive brake systems, and some of that which I was reading was telling me that a properly designed braking system does not need to be power-assisted with a vacuum booster, so this is the approach that I took, and by golly, all that reading and research paid off. The original goal for me was to replace the front drum with disc on my 65 Sub, and it all worked out very nicely.

You did admit that you should "probably read this whole thread" before picking on me. I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

Cheers!

So I read the whole thread and I hadn't missed anything. I'm thinking that your "lock up' experience came in an over boosted vehicle. Like my parents one time '75 Pontiac. Back in the day( early '80's) I used their car to take them to the airport. On the way back some guy cut unexpectedly into my lane. As I was used to driving an un-boosted '57 Austin Healey, I hit the brakes harder than maybe I should have and the car began to fishtail on a straight freeway. Not all boosted systems work that way. Pretty much all more modern cars have boosted brakes including those without anti-lock. My experience with a '66 4WD Suburban, using the factory drum brake booster, and maybe too large a master cylinder diameter was that I really needed to stand on the brakes with both feet to stop fast. I could do it but I wanted something with less effort if my wife needed to drive. Anyway, you guys all seem to be talking 2WD. 4WD conversion has different set of issues but booster/no booster decision should be more or less the same.