While it's admirable to want to upgrade braking, especially for safety
reasons, I for one don't see why one would want to convert to a more
complex system. ESPECIALLY one that in my own experience is shown to not
work reliably. And one with THREE cylinders. Whew, just something else to
leak!
Seriously, I've had a couple of failures of the tandem master system and In
EVERY case the pedal went to the floor. No reserve braking, no half pedal,
just complete loss of braking (thank god for the parking brake, however
limited it is in braking force)
Frankly I understand the principle of operation, but in practise it would
appear to not work as claimed. Whenever I've had to bleed the brakes,
cracking only one bleeder at a time (which would seem to be a classic case
of one system failure), the pedal, again, goes to the floor. This to me
indicates NO braking not just partial braking.
So I've always had serious doubts about the actual effectiveness of the
tandem master/(supposably) separate braking systems. The completely
separate twin cylinder setup would in my opinion, be a much more reliable
system (a little more costly, slightly more complex and probably why
manufacturers didn't go with them) as far as safety failure modes go, but I
don't think I go with three - If you had a failure of the main cylinder you
are basically back to a single system and there are a plethora of orifices
to leak from!
Barry Schwartz (San Diego) bschwart@pacbell.net
72 PI, V6 Spitfire (daily driver)
70 GT6+ (when I don't drive the Spit)
70 Spitfire (long term project)
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