Posted by Martin White on July 17, 1998 at 13:20:34:

In Reply to: Re: Any one Need info on UP-RATING Brakes. posted by Nigel Annis on July 16, 1998 at 01:18:52:

Hi Nigel

You wont necessarily need a bigger servo, but you may consider using a different master cylinder. The current one on your SWB should have a ratio of 62% front to 38% rear. This is to make sure that the front wheels will lock up first when braking hard (if it happens the other way arround it's change of underpants time as the back end will spin arround!!). If I was you I would first fit the 11" drums from the long wheel base keep your current servo and master cylinder and see what you think. The only benifits of changing these are less pedal movement and a little more effective brakeing ( more on this later) with a bigger master and less foot effort with a bigger servo.

The LWB master cylinder is a 50/50 ratio. This is because the front brakes and rear brakes are of different sizes (ie 3 inche wide and 11" dia on front and 2?inch wide and 10" dia on the rear). Later SWB had the LWB combination anyway to reduce the different axles types beinbg used at rover. What you may find is that with the standard master cylinder (if yours is an 62/38 ratio)that the pedal travel is excessive. If you can't live with this you could fit one from a lWB or Late SWB.

The information I have is that the LWB and SWB servos are exactly the same. However you can fit a larger one that is used on some cars. The current on is a 2/1 ratio and the next largest on you can fit (without major engine bay reconstruction ) is a 3/1 ratio i.e. you use 1/3 less pedal effort for the same amount of braking. This weekend I will try to scan the info I have on all the combinations and send you a copy of which carrs have the larger servos.

Also the front wheel cylinder on the SWB is the same as the rear LWB one i.e 31.8mm dia, but the front LWB ones are 28.6mm. This is all to confuse every one. The front LWB brakes are what are called twin leading shoe, which bacically means that you have two single side wheel cylinders to give the increased braking. This set up gives 1/3 more braking effort compared to the 1 double wheel cylinder of the same sized drumbrake.

To sum up use the LWB drum brake front and rear if applicable, see how you get on with pedal travel and effort and then consider mastercylinder / servo changes.

By the way the are 3 or 4 mastercylinders which are larger than the landrover on that wil fit straight on to the servo if you really want to stop, but you need very good tyres and dry tarmac to make use of them.

I 'll try to email you some more infomation this week.

Bye

Martin

P.S.
If your wondering why I know about the design of the brakes and how you can fit car servos to landrovers it because I use to work for the people who make them, and out of curiosity decided to find out about all the different servos and mastercylinders etc that would fit.

Follow Up Messages

• Re: Re: Re: Any one Need info on UP-RATING Brakes. Neil Paisnel 00:14:25 7/20/98 (0)