Its definitely the same guy, me
I unfortunately lost all of my old login information including the email address the account was registered to when I had let my temper get the best of me and I accidentally destroyed my device.
I still feel the same way about drum brakes and really there isn’t much to debate. Physics dictate that they are simply more efficient than disc brakes. I felt that way 12 years ago. I felt that way 30 years ago and I will likely feel that way 12 years from now.
How’s that 1989 Caprice holding up at the moment?
There’s one in my neighborhood of the same vintage, but I think it hasn’t been driven lately
I prefer the Donk and Bubble Impalas to the box.
The 100+ posts above and the contrary opinions of just about everybody else would not agree.
In almost every way except the most important ones; heat management, equal side-to-side braking performance, shedding rainwater, and cost.
In 1953, the fastest car at the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race was a 5.4 liter Hemi-powered Cunningham sports car. It was equipped with 4 wheel 17 inch aluminum drum brakes with air and water cooling. The car finished 3 behind 2 disk-brake equipped 3.4 liter Jaguar C-types. The Cunningham’s brakes had to be managed when they got hot which slowed the car allowing the less powerful, and slower, Jags to pass for the lead and eventual win and second place.
That was the beginning of the end for drum brakes in motorsports and eventually limited uses in road cars.
The outlandish denial is hilarious.
I’m in my fifties, and am also an ‘old thinker’.
And not just with cars. I truly believe a lot of things in life were better, thirty-plus years ago.
Standard time was still observed for most of the year, and people felt less groggy.
CRT ‘tube’ TVs were still in everyone’s home.
Fast food didn’t contain high-fructose corn syrup, and was actually healthier.
This thing we’re talking on - the Internet - wasn’t yet relevant, and accordingly people were nicer, and actually better informed about the issues than they are today, with internet and social media.
I am older than you and Daylight Savings time has existed my entire life.
Why is that a good thing? My first 19 inch color TV cost $299 in 1980 dollars… now a 55 inch flat screen in $299 in today’s dollars worth 1/6th of those 1980 dollars.
Oh yes it did. High fructose corn sugar started being placed into food in the 1970s to reduce animal fats and because it could be grown in the midwest. McDonalds still used fats for their fries (these WERE better in the 80s).
Phones and long distance calls were both expensive in the 80s. Both became cheap as chips in the 2000s.
Notice I said that Standard time was observed for more of the year than it is now. Not the whole year.
Re: McDonalds and phone tech.
I’d still prefer living back then than now.
I.am almost 84 years old. I have no desire to repeat “the good old days”. I had a CRT television. I was able to follow the schematic diagram and, using my vacuum tube voltmeter, find the problem. I much prefer my moden flat screen.television. I did much of the maintenance on my cars–replaced the spark plugs and distributor points every 10,000 miles. That is a chore I don’t have to do anymore. My 30 year old lawn mower with its internal combustion engine finally gave out 2 years ago. I replaced it with a battery powered mower. I charge the battery while I eat breakfast. I don’t have to mess with gasoline cans, change oil, and replace the air filter and spark plug at the beginning of every season. I grew up in a house with a coal fired furnace. I much prefer the even heat of my present system with a heat pump and gas furnace where thecm heat pump heats the house when the outside temperature is above 40 degrees and at lower outside temperatures, the gas furnace comes on. I much prefer the LED lighting to incandescent or flourescent lights. I certainly prefer my Toyota Sienna minivan to my first car–a 1947 Pontiac. If I am still driving when I need to upgrade from the Sienna, I may get an EV, but most certainly a hybrid.
It’ll cost you that much a year to run a CRT TV. I was working for a medium sized company when we started transitioning from CRT to flat screen LCD monitors. We saw a significant decrease in our electric bill when we switched. It was well worth the cost to switch everyone over.
I actually do like the picture on a well-adjusted CRT in good condition more than that of even a flat screen taken out of Store or Vivid mode.
You were suspended from this forum for two months as a result of your inappropriate and insulting responses to several forum members. The irony of your desire for the good old days when “people were nicer” is truly amazing.
Nostalgia and memory are often skewed from reality. Some years back, we discovered an old gaming system tucked away in the basement. My wife and I were quite excited to relive those past gaming experiences so I spent quite a bit of time resurrecting the old system. Lots of contact burnishing and other restoration work to get it functioning again. We fired it up with a game we both loved to play back then. It was on for about 5 minutes when we concluded it was ridiculously lousy graphics compared to what we remembered and was actually no fun because of how outdated the technology was compared to more contemporary systems and display devices. We threw it in the trash. A stark reminder of how skewed our memories are and how our expectations evolve with technology improvements over time…
Maybe a early LED TV/monitor that was only 460p or 720p. There’s no comparison of the BEST CRT TV to a good LED 1080p. Decades ago when I was an engineer designing military radar systems - the monitors we used were specialized CRT systems that cost about $20,000. The resolution was 10,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels. We needed the high-def resolution aircraft detection. Not something you can buy for a home TV.
All im saying is that if you were tasked with designing a braking mechanism that was most efficient, you would end up with the drum brake every time.
Self energizing, protected from the elements, most surface area, the drum brake has it all.
In areas that use road salt, the drum brake requires less maintenance.
Drum brakes provide more stopping power until they start getting hot, they do not dissipate heat as well as disc brakes do, at least with most designs that actually made it to production.
You have to be careful there. Efficiency depends on who you are asking. If you ask the production people building the product which design is more efficient, they will point to disc brake design. If you ask the financial person, you will get the same reply. Etc.
Speaking for someone that lived with both systems as well, I can tell you I never had a drum brake car that could stop with enough force to drive you into the seat belt like a modern system. My 2025 Rav4 has almost scary braking capability. I have to carefully feather the brakes to avoid stopping too abruptly. Back in the day, it was the opposite scary- will it stop before I impact this object? 
Going beyond the superiority in stopping power under normal circumstances, let’s not forget about brake fade with drum brakes.
With my '71 Charger, the need to do a “panic” stop from expressway speeds was really scary because the brakes were so badly-faded by the time that I got the car down to ~30 mph. And, let’s not forget about what happens to drum brakes after you drive through a large puddle.
I’m just gonna say that the good ol days was a much simpler time, but simpler also meant not as effective, before 911 was standard across America in 1999, you had to remember or look for the phone numbers of the police, fire department and or EMS, one 3 digit number (911) is much easier to remember than a number of 7 digit numbers, also could not walk any further than the phone cord, had to have a phone in most rooms or run like heck to get to the phone, now you can just carry your phone everywhere you go… Also, now you can keep tabs on your kids, instead of waiting for them to come home…
Then there is medicine/medications, I might be in a wheel chair by now if not for the medical treatment I get for my neurological disease, including meds…
Now I WILL say that the good ol days is very true when it comes to music… lol
