What heats brakes more?

[Lincolnmania]

try that route with a ton of coal in a ranger

[1987cp]

sounds like torture! Dangerous, too.

[gadget73]

brake on, brake off. Constantly riding the pedal will cook things and cause massive brake fade. Not much else for it. You can use engine braking to reduce the demand on the brake pedal too. I also do the brake application in spurts thing on steep hills. I might be cursing myself, but I have never experienced brake fade in any vehicle I've owned, provided the brake system was fundamentally in good shape to start with. I never even managed to fade out the drum brakes in my Beetle bad enough that there was any issue stopping the car. I heavily relied on engine braking with that car though, the brakes were terrible.

[deepsleep]

Okay thanks for the info guys. I'll stick to the way I did it the first time. Leave it in 1 and pump the brakes rather than riding em.

[Archangel]

That should do it

[1987cp]

So is this what the phrase "pump the brakes" actually means? I had previously thought it meant stomping hard on the pedal and then releasing it, and repeating the cycle repeatedly in rapid succession. In many situations, I would expect that to result in basically a pair of dotted black lines down the road. More confusingly, the particular context in which I'm used to hearing that phrase is "pump the brakes to build up pressure", which I don't think makes any physical sense at all.

[gadget73]

Depends on the context. In the snow, you want short applications and releases. On a hill, you'll want longer applications and longer releases. The speed varies but the general idea is to not hold steady on the pedal all the time.

And if you've ever bled brakes, you can pump them to build pressure when there is only a certain amount of air in the system. You'll feel it in the pedal, it will build up off the floor.

[1987cp]

That's funny, I always figured the thing in low-traction situations was to carefully modulate the brakes with gentle, steady pressure so they don't lock up. At least, that's what I've always done .... conventional widsom from a lot of people seems to be, "any loss of traction is always a bad thing".


I had always assumed that the repeated pumping during brake bleeding was simply to force the air out of the system, with the pump-three-times-and-hold routine primarily to apply more pressure to the trapped air.

I've noticed that if you apply the brake with the engine off and then apply it again, it's a lot harder to push, but that the pedal resistance goes back down immediately as soon as there's vacuum to the booster. But it would seem illogical that the brake booster itself is involved in allowing the fluid to return to the master cylinder ..... or is it?

[Archangel]

That's funny, I always figured the thing in low-traction situations was to carefully modulate the brakes with gentle, steady pressure so they don't lock up. At least, that's what I've always done .... conventional widsom from a lot of people seems to be, "any loss of traction is always a bad thing".

That is indeed the way to do it - gentle brake apply so you're right at the borderline of losing traction, but without actually losing any. If you do put too much pressure and lock up, you let off so the wheel starts rolling again, then apply the brakes again - it's a gentle apply tho, not stomping on the. That's why it's called pumping the brakes, it refers to the up/down motion of the brake pedal. There is tho the fact that if you know your vehicle good and the road conditions are fairly consistent during this you will probably hardly ever have to do apply/release the brakes like that, it's just in case you lose traction, and in this context it's really more of a figure of speech than an actual strategy to build up stupid-high line pressure.

I had always assumed that the repeated pumping during brake bleeding was simply to force the air out of the system, with the pump-three-times-and-hold routine primarily to apply more pressure to the trapped air.

I actually never do that, I always do a full apply then full release, never pump the brakes while bleeding - jacking up the line pressure like that can push air bubbles where they normally won't go, and if you ever worked on a RABS-equipped vehicle you'll know how much of a pain in the ass that situation is. So yeah, full on and then full off on the brake pedal a few times with the engine off, then when pedal stiffens up fire up engine and repeat full on/off a few more times to make sure all possible air gets purged.

I've noticed that if you apply the brake with the engine off and then apply it again, it's a lot harder to push, but that the pedal resistance goes back down immediately as soon as there's vacuum to the booster. But it would seem illogical that the brake booster itself is involved in allowing the fluid to return to the master cylinder ..... or is it?

Well, what happens is that with the engine off you only have your pedal force to push down on the pedal, with the engine on you have the booster adding quite a lot of force on its own, thus doing most of the pushing for you. That's it, not much else to it.

[1990LTD]

Just grease 'em up. With proper lubrication they won't get too hot. Should try running water through the motor just to be safe as well