OT: Mature driver review

I've had these experiences too. I think it is dependent on gearing rations. My Metro will run at 30 mph in 4th gear on a level road without any difficulty. A previous Fiesta needed 3rd a lot of the time.

Are we talking the same car? This is what I get, though I can't find this in the manual I've downloaded

Gear Ratios

Item Ratio

It's a while since I've done any distance in reverse but as I recall it is a matter of locking onto a distant point, noting where that is on some part of the rear window and naturally aiming at it.

I used to be fairly good at reversing a trailer with my boat on it through a dog-leg entrance and then into the garage. Not sure how I would cope now.

And if they are not bright red F1 cars don't stop!

I learnt at a relatively young age that most drum brakes work better when braking forward than backwards. Before I was old enough to be allowed to drive I would practice going in and out of the (shhh... ) asbestos garage. The V shaped indent at the back of the garage was when my Dad's 1939 Austin 12 didn't stop as quickly going back into the garage as it did driving out of it.

Next weekend, wheels off, brake drums off - explanation.

Typically yellow orange.

Anyone who can reverse a trailer/caravan more than a few yards without jacknifing it earns my utter amazement. I remember once going on a course where various driving skills were taught - skid pan, cornering a high speed and reversing a trailer. I was the only one on the course who managed to jacknife the trailer every single sodding time, even going in a straight line; I never got onto the "hard" part of steering it into a narrow parking space or round a bend. The instructor was spending a disproportionate amount of time on me so I said I'd sit that one out because I didn't want him to neglect everyone else.

I understood the theory very clearly, but I could not judge how much I needed to turn on one direction to counter any error and bring the trailer back in line again. It didn't help that it was long before the days of reversing cameras so the trailer was completely invisible in any of the three mirrors until it had already strayed off course. I imagine a reversing camera nowadays makes it a lot easier to see when the trailer is starting to wander, so you can correct errors a lot earlier.

OK, I'm sure I'd have got better with a lot more practice, but in the limited time, I was the only "novice" who didn't pick it up as quickly as everyone else.

I was a natural on the skid pan and at high-speed cornering, though ;-)

I'm amazed that drum brakes on cars lasted as long as they did before being superseded by disc brakes. Right from when I was a little boy looking at pictures of how the two types of brakes worked, I thought that drum brakes looked a really "Mary Ellen" (*) way of stopping a vehicle. Like bike brakes which pulled the brake blocks away from the centre of the wheel rather than gripping the *sides* of the rim with equally balanced force.

(*) To use my Dad's expression to describe "half-hearted", "ineffectual", "playing at it".

There is a very good reason why drum brakes were used. They require less force than disks. They 'grab' on, as AnthonyL found out, at least when going forwards.

Without power assisted braking, that's what you prefer to use. Their drawback was heat dissipation. But in the days of 40hp cars with tops speeds of 55mph, that wasn't such a big deal...

Discs are also not great for handbrakes, which were until recently basically powered by a human pulling on a piece of string, and discs really need more force than that. Very nearly all my cars have had discs on the front and drums on the rear.

I've heard of some cars having discs all round but supplementary small drum brakes just for the handbrake.

Are there any cars which have hydraulic rather then cable-operated hand brakes - maybe on a separate system to the footbrake?

That is fairly common...

Mine is electric. No idea what actually operates...

"The Jaguar XF handbrake is an electronic parking brake (EPB) system that uses a central actuator motor and cables to clamp the rear brake discs, features a manual emergency release under the centre console, and commonly requires a diagnostic scan tool to wind back the motor during rear brake pad services. "

Well there ya go.

Quite a lot of these electric parking brakes can be backed-off without a scan tool simply by reversing the polarity of the wiring to the motor...

How responsive are electric handbrakes? Can you coordinate the clutch, accelerator and handbrake in the standard three-control manoeuvre when you are doing a hill-start, the one that all learners practice until they are proficient? (*) or do they have that hill-start-assist abomination which means that when you come to a halt facing downhill, apply the handbrake and then come off the footbrake, the car rolls a couple of inches and comes to a very abrupt brick-wall stop? Our Honda has HSA (even though it has a normal cable handbrake) and it takes some getting used to very gradually releasing the footbrake so the car still rolls (there's no avoiding it!) but comes to a more gentle stop. First thing we commented on at the first service, only to be told "it's designed like that so you can have HSA".

(*) Once learned, never forgotten, even when the bozo in front grinds to a halt on a 1:3 and you have to do stop and then do a hill start on such a steep gradient - after watching bozo try loads of time, gradually using up all the very generous safety space that I always leave people on hills like Rosedale Chimney Bank.

Surely when you release the handbrake that's what you are doing - reversing the polarity of the cable-tightening motor...

Not.

You must have heard them being applied in car-parks etc, about a two second long whiny-squawking noise ...

Previous two cars have the so-called "hill hold" but would be better thought of as simply "hold assist", used the ABS pump to apply hydraulic pressure to brake pads, same as using brake pedal, absolutely zero roll applying or removing the "hand"brake, not a mm.

My new hybrid, not quite so good, ok normally but when starting off on a slope it can roll as it's relying on summing a combination of multiple inputs into planetary gearbox with output to the wheels, it can roll a little before it catches itself.

Anyway, you won't be doing J-turn defensive driving with your electric handbrake.

Seems to be a difference between releasing brake and backing off completely to remove pads ... I've never changed pads on any modern car, but have seen the videos on youtube on how to do it without the OBD tool.

...and backwards, unless they are the twin leading shoe type.

Some Minis had twin leading shoe drum brakes on the front wheels; I would have thought this would reduce their effectiveness when reversing.

I'll leave that to the techs...my days of crawling under cars are over