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.

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 ...

Press a pedal and your car stops, but how? The mechanisms that control a vehicle’s brakes are explained in this simple article. Most drivers understand how their brakes work in the simplest of terms: ...

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 ...

Thanks to the huge selection of aftermarket parts that are just a phone call away, building a trick truck that is safe and fun to drive is easier than ever. A great example of aftermarket components ...

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: ...