Thursday, Nov 29, 2012 at 23:49
When the fairly small trailer has 10 x 2 inch drums and the vehicle has 8 x 1 1/2 inch rear drums the trailer can make a considerable contribution...that is a hell of a lot more friction area
It is not hard for a smallish electric braked trailer to contribute more stopping power than mass, if the maker is not stingy with the brakes.
Thus the combination stops better than the tow vehicle alone
electric brakes are generally leading shoe arrangements so they do not require a lot of pressure to achieve braking effort.
In fact disk brakes require more hydraulic pressure than drums to achieve braking effort.
The main reason for using disk brakes on cars is heat disipation, they are only particularly advantageous on fast moving vehicle that make repeated and or sustained stops using the brakes.....discs can also achieve longer pad life than drums.
The main reason for using electric, hydraulic disks is
water resistance, this is why they are very common on large boat trailers and not on caravans
Look at heavy transport only a very few have disc brakes, there are pretty
well no disk brakes use on heavy transport trailers.
For outright braking effort discs are no better than drums, in the applications we are talking about.
But I do agree that the general standard of light trailer engineering is very low.
After all we still have cable operated over ride brakes in common use....and people have spent good money encorpirating electric brakes in their trailer ( over $1000 retail per axle) and they wont cough up a few extra bucks ( arround $200 total) to get a good cotroller.
cheers
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