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Hydraulic power
brake booster
Rear disc or drum
brakes

Master cylinder
and ABS
hydraulic unit
ABS wiring
harness

Parking
brake lever
Brake
pedal

Front disc brakes

Delmar/Cengage Learning

ABS
computer

FIGURE 1-1 A typical automotive brake system comprises these major components and subsystems.

Leverage and the Brake Pedal Design

Authors Note: A fulcrum is the point at which one lever pivots or sits to apply
force to another lever or device. A seesaw pivots on a fulcrum.

The bulkhead may

be referred to as the
rewall.

Braking action on an automobile begins with the drivers foot on the brake pedal. The driver
applies force to the pedal (which we learn more about later), and the pedal transfers that
force to the master cylinder pistons. The brake pedal also multiplies the force of the drivers
foot through leverage.
The brake pedal is mounted on a lever with a pivot near the top of the lever. The movement of the pedal causes a pushrod to move against a master cylinder. The master cylinder
is mounted inside the engine compartment on the rear bulkhead. The master cylinder is a
hydraulic pump that is operated by the driver through the brake pedal.
Most brake pedal installations are an example of what is called a second-class lever. In the
science of physics, a second-class lever has a pivot point (or fulcrum) at one end and force
applied to the other end. A second-class lever transfers the output force in the same direction
as the input force, and multiplies the input force, depending on where the output load is
placed. The brake pedal installation shown in Figure 1-2 has a 10-inch lever, and the load (the
master cylinder pushrod) is 2 inches from the fulcrum (8 inches from the pedal). The pedal
ratio, or the force multiplying factor, is the length of the lever divided by the distance of the
load from the fulcrum. In this case, it is:
10
___
= 5:1
2

If the driver applies 50 pounds of force to the pedal, the lever increases the force to
250pounds at the master cylinder. When the driver applies 50 pounds of input force, the
pedal may travel about 2.5 inches. When the lever applies 250 pounds of output force, the
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Brake pedal
pivot (fulcrum)

250
pounds
force

2 inches

10 inches

50
pounds
force

Lever
Bulkhead

Brake
pedal

Delmar/Cengage Learning

Master
cylinder

FIGURE 1-2 The brake pedal assembly uses leverage to increase force
applied to the master cylinder.

pushrod moves only 0.5 inch. Thus, as leverage in a second-class lever increases force, it
reduces distance by the same factor:
2.5 inches
_________
= 0.5 inch
5

Service Brake History and Design

Modern automobile brakes evolved from the relatively crude brakes of horse-drawn vehicles.
The earliest motor vehicle brakes were pads or blocks applied by levers and linkage to the
outside of a solid tire on a wooden-spoked wheel. The same principles of leverage that work
in modern brake pedal installations increased the force of the brake pad applied to the solid
tire. These brakes worked well with speeds of 10 mph to 20 mph and little trac. Higher
performance (30 mph and beyond) and pneumatic tires meant that early wagon brakes were
short-lived on automobiles.
By the end of the rst decade of the twentieth century, automobiles were using either
external-contracting band brakes or internal-expanding drum brakes. A few internalexpanding band brakes were tried on some early motor vehicles. External-contracting brakes
have a band lined with friction material wrapped around a drum located on the driveline or
on the wheels. The band is anchored at one end or at the center; levers and linkage tighten the
band around the drum for braking force. The service brakes on Fords famous Model T were
a single contracting band applied to a drum inside the transmission.
Band brakes, either internal or external, lose their eectiveness when higher braking force
is needed. When you study drum brakes, you will learn about the mechanical servo action of
brake shoes. It is very dicult to develop servo action with an internal band brake, and higher
brake force is thus needed. Servo action on an external band brake tends to make the brake
grab at high brake forces and high drum speed. Other problems associated with band brakes
included dirt and water damage and loss of friction with external bands and the tendency of
these brakes to lock if the drum overheated and expanded too much. Internal band brakes
also suered from band and drum overheating and reduced braking force.
As drum brakes evolved, internal-expanding shoe-and-drum brakes became the standard. External-contracting band brakes were used as parking brakes until the late 1950s, but
their days as service brakes were over by the late 1920s.

Leverage is the
use of a lever and
fulcrum to create
a mechanical
advantage, usually
to increase force
applied to an object.

Friction is the force

that resists motion
between the
surfaces of two
objects or forms of
matter.

A drum brake is
a brake in which
friction is generated
by brake shoes
rubbing against the
inside surface of a
brake drum attached
to the wheel.

3
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Brake pedal

Brake pedal rod

Brake pedal
pivot

Brake shoes

Drum

Delmar/Cengage Learning

Cam

FIGURE 1-3 Simple mechanical drum brake.

Drum Brakes. By the mid-1920s, drum brakes with internal-expanding shoes were the general rule. Early drum brakes were operated mechanically by levers and linkage (Figure1-3).
Expensive luxury cars such as the 1921 Duesenberg Model A were among the rst to have
hydraulic drum brakes. Hydraulic brakes started to appear on lower-priced cars in the
mid-1920s with Chryslers Light Six, which became the Plymouth. Ford Motor Company,
however, used mechanical brakes through the 1938 model year.
Authors Note: There were two major reasons for the increased use of hydraulicapplied brakes over the mechanically-applied ones: 1) The four brakes never seem
to apply the same amount of braking force at the same time because 2) the brake
linkages required almost constant re-adjustment to make the brake work at all.
The rigid brake shoes used with drum brakes could be made stronger than the exible
bands of earlier brake designs. This eliminated breakage problems that occurred with greater
braking forces that were required as automobiles got more powerful and faster. With hydraulic actuation, four-wheel drum brakes remained the standard braking system for most cars
into the middle and late 1960s. With the coming of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
(FMVSS) 105 in 1967, brake systems had to pass specic performance tests that made front
disc brakes the general rule in the 1970s. Even at the beginning of the twenty-rst century,
however, drum brakes are still used on the rear wheels of many cars and light trucks.
Authors Note: The larger the vehicle, the more likely it is to have drum brakes on
the rear axles. Over-the-road trucks (semis) have drum on the trailer axles, usually
drums on the tractors drive axles, and about a 50/50 split between drums and discs
on the steering axles.

Disc Brakes. Modern automotive disc brakes were developed from aircraft brakes of
World War II. Known originally as spot brakes, disc brakes work by applying pressure to
two brake pads on opposite sides of a spinning rotor attached to the wheel hub (Figure 1-4).
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