hydraulic brakes

[20387774]

I was wondering if anyone had modified their brake system to use hydraulics instead of the original system. Any thoughts on this conversion? If you did convert, what wheel cylinders and master cylinders did you use in the conversion? TIA

John

[rob love]

One of the Manitoba collectors (Gord Falk) has owned/seen such a conversion. A farmer installed the cylinders and brake shoes from a standard Ford CMP of the time period. Usually, such conversions were done to try and restore some level of steering, but would usually not work out well with the warp system disabled. The extra work the brakes have to do to compensate for the lack of proper warp steering causes a lot of extra heat.

My own opinion is that there is no need for such shortcuts. If the bogey is free to travel left and right, the linkages properly adjusted,and the brake drums turned clean along with un-glazed shoes with an arc matching the drums, then the brakes and steering on a carrier leaves nothing to be desired.

If one were doing a complete modernization or revamp of a carrier with no historic consideration, then a disc brake setup might give beter performance than the drums. Even better would be the rear end out of a T-16, with it's proper steering control diff built right in to it. The Nodwells or Go tracts we had in the Cdn forces actually used the T16 diff in them. When I was in MooseJaw, the vehicle we had in the 90s came with pages out of the T16 manual and marked by Levy Auto for spare parts.

[greg anderson (RIP)]

I came across a carrier near Bancroft a year or so ago which had the usual armor removed but it had been fitted with hydraulic brakes and a sort of bulldozer blade on front -non runner-owner wanted to sell -I posted details on this site I believe -no interest shown - dont know how well brakes worked -Greg