Rarity?

Sorry, no, that is not a fact. It's a myth best filed in the same trashbin as "Breaker points are better than electronic ignition!" and "Carburetors are better than fuel injection!" and "Bias-ply tires are better than radials!" and "Leaded gasoline was better!": fun to think about in an old-car fantasy-world kind of way, but not a part of reality.

You don't have to believe me, and you don't have to correct your basic misunderstandings of the matter if you don't want to; if you dig back through old magazines (everything from car mags to Popular Mechanics/Popular Science/Mechanix Illustrated to Consumer Reports) from when disc brakes were becoming widely available as an option, you'll find a lot of "Should your next car have disc brakes?" types of articles where they test a car with drums and the same car with discs. You might find the odd case (an unusually good drum system vs. an unusually poor disc system, that kind of thing) but the overall result is very consistent and it runs in one direction only: the discs are better from the first stop on.

And that's on cars carefully inspected and adjusted exactly just right to make a "fair" comparison. If we ask the question in terms of the real world where drum brakes are usually at least a little out of whack, the discs win even bigger.


Thanks for the clarification Dan. I am just going by what I have heard and read, and my own experience. I admit however that I am no where near as well read as you.

I formulate my opinion thdough my personal exeperience - I have had late 60s mopars with manual drum brakes that worked awesome, (but I have also had drum brake cars that were terrible....), plus my logic which tells me there is more surface area in a drum brake plus the self energizing effect of drum brakes. I have also seen more than one aftermarket disc conversion that was worse than the drums it replaced.

That being said, I do not believe for one minute that a drum brake is superior to a good disc set up and am a firm believer in using factory parts for conversions.