Hi all
My handbrakes a bag of balls, if I tighten it up so you can lock the wheels on gravel then it'l stick a bit on the road and will often be smokein after a short drive

Any good tips/tricks so I can get the wheels to lock but not catch on the road, im blamein the weak handbrake for me hitting the combine the other day lol, will new shoes + cable make a difference?

thanks James

New drums and shoes will make an improvement. Make sure the brake lever inside the drum swivesls freely. These often seize up giving crap back brakes.

For what you are doing I have one word


HYDRO

Or a 360 setup. All 360's I've driven have been hugely better at handbrakes than the 340's. That way, even if you go hydro, you have significantly bigger drums.

hmmmm... interesting. Does that mean that on a 340, swapping to 360 drums would be an easy and cheap upgrade for the rear brakes (handbrake aside)?

any hassle involved with swapping them? would it acctually be worth the time?

I've been looking for a way to improve the rears on a low budget, as the fronts are already getting vented disks.

Handbrake cables are different, everything else is a straight swap. Fake has a 360 rear axle.

so are the mounting points different for the handbrake cable of is it a case of source an axle and throw a new cable in on installation?

do you recon there's any gain from 360 drums or is it a waste of time/money?

You need new cables, the length and end is different.

Depends what you want it for really. The handbrake mech is hugely more effective on a 360 than a 340 for a start. For normal driving, I havn't got the standard bias limiting setup that a stock 300 has so makes it a bit harder to judge what it would do to a stock car.

For normal driving, a 340's drums can be made to come in slightly early by adjusting the "auto ajusters" up by hand. Well, at least in both of my cars the auto ajusters didn't get involved as they had been siezed at some point in their life, and no amount of cleaning and greasing would fix that.

As ever, they are brakes. I take no responsibility for you not thinking through what you are doing, or making a dangerous car! It's perfectly possible to put too much rear bias on and make the car try to switch ends under breaking

cheers for the advise, think i'll give new shoes and a good good scrub down + clean a try 1st, dont rly want to start swaping axels and trying to convert to hydro, but i suppose if this dosen't work that could well be the way forward

cheers james

Chris_C wrote: As ever, they are brakes. I take no responsibility for you not thinking through what you are doing, or making a dangerous car! It's perfectly possible to put too much rear bias on and make the car try to switch ends under breaking

Fully understood, I was thinking more of a budget way to match uprated front brakes rather than to simply add more braking to the rear.

I'm trying to find good budget solutions to uprate the performance of my car...F7P, better suspension, vented disks, etc. not just 'gr8 4 driftin y0'.

to be honest i think the standard front brakes are pretty good anyway