Rear wheel handbrake.

Rev. Dick Deluxe · Post by **Rev. Dick Deluxe** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:48 pm

Has anyone ever tried it?
I was thinking of getting a pair of motorbike calipers or some other small hydraulic calipers and rigging them up to a hydraulic handbrake, just to help getting the back end round corners and to allow me to do a reasonable burn out at the strip.
Does this sound like the best way of going about it or is there a simpler method that i'm just missing?

Rich.

jeremy · Post by **jeremy** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:58 pm

The reason a BX (and all other hydraulic Citroens) have a front handbrake is that they have trailing arm rear suspension and a self leveling system.

If you drive a car with tailing arm rear suspension with the handbrake on the rear wheels - and pull up facing uphill the car will rise up at the rear as it rolls back a little and the trailing arms rotate.

This is fine unless you have a self leveling rear suspension - which will seek to adjust the rear suspension height. A BX would open the height corrector - and as the car didn't drop it would stay open depressurising the rear suspension. Release the handbrake and the back of the car would drop to its bump stops!

Easy answer - put the handbrake on the front!

Toddman · Post by **Toddman** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:17 pm

Yes rev it has been done nad very sucessfully - my mates did it on a rally car they ran for a while, it was a diesel and more of an enduro type rally car but they did pass it on to another citroen nut who fitted a 16v lump into it.

Cheers
Luke

DLM · Post by **DLM** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 4:44 pm

I'm with Jeremy unless this a completely off-public-road BX: the amount of handbrake up-and-down on the rear of a Peugeot with rear arms/rear handbrake can be very disconcerting.

Vanny · Post by **Vanny** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:16 pm

Unless i'm mistaken Rev Dick is talking about a hydraulic system, and more over fo track work/racing, so it would be a doddle to sort and the issue of the self levelling/hand brake tightening isnt so much of a problem on a hydraulic system where you only have to reduce the pressure to make the brakes loose!

jeremy · Post by **jeremy** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:23 pm

If its for track - as the back brakes are split from the front - they could be operated by a separate valve as well using the existing system and some new piping - no need for new calipers, just operate whats there!