Hydraulic hand brake

MichaelBooth · Postby **MichaelBooth** » 03 Mar 2013 01:57

Hi and thanks for the welcome. I would like to install a hydraulic handbrake to secure the car better and for drifting competitions. Does anyone have experience with these?

Hasbeen · Postby **Hasbeen** » 03 Mar 2013 05:15

Hi Michael. If you want to have the car registered to use on the road you will have to find an engineer, licenced to compliance modifications, who will approve the thing.

I wanted to fit one, as it would have been easier, when I fitted the diff, & disc brakes on the back of the 8.

I could not find one in south east Queensland prepared to approve one, for love nor money.

Good luck finding one in Sydney.

Hasbeen

Morley Faulkner · Postby **Morley Faulkner** » 03 Mar 2013 06:56

Hi I fitted Toyota Levin calipers on the back of mine and used the Toyota Corolla (disc brake version) hand brake cable it was dead easy to fit very little mod to fit just two clamps on side of tunnel and a 5/16" unf threaded rod to fit existing hand brake. Will post photo if interested.
If you want to fit a hydraulic h/brake in NZ you need to have a competition license and prove you will be doing X amount of events per year. I was advised to forget it.

Beans · Postby **Beans** » 03 Mar 2013 08:13

This is certainly one in the category of investigating the local rules to see what's allowed, before you commit yourself.
Looking at a hydraulic handbrake myself at the moment for the FHC Sprint, will probably go for two small/separate callipers for the hand brake.

Which of course means converting to rear discs.
I do have a fairly simple rear disc set-up at the moment (from S&S)

which does the job (including handbrake turns) admirable with a cable operated handbrake, but there's room for improvement.
And I like the challenge of building it [;)]

You can do it with one calliper per side but you'll need a one way valve in the brake pipe for obvious reasons.
And that's another part that can go wrong ...

And welcome, ... mmm drifting with a TR7 [:D]

<center>

1980 TR7 DHC (my first car, now restored and back on the road)
1981 TR7 FHC Sprint (better known as 't Kreng)
[url="http://www.tr7beans.blogspot.com/"]My full Weblog[/url]</center>

Cobber · Postby **Cobber** » 03 Mar 2013 08:23

There is no way the registration authorities are going to accept a hydraulic hand brake, they would be worried that it would release with loss of pressure from a leak.
And in a state with annual inspections, you'll have an annual problem.

"Keep calm, relax, focus on the problem & PULL THE BLOODY TRIGGER"

80'Triumph TR7, 73'Land Rover (Ford 351. V8),
'89 Ford Fairlane
'98 MG-F, 69'Ford F250.
76' Ford F100

RadioGuy · Postby **RadioGuy** » 03 Mar 2013 10:06

If I remember correctly the mechanical "Hand Break" is/was actually the emergency brake. Designed to allow the auto to be stopped in case of a system hydraulic failure (No fluid).

Evolution of the "brake"

Emergency brake
Parking brake
Hand brake
Foot rest [}:)]
One of the "chicken" handles [:0]

Maintained on Saturdayâ€¦Drive on Fun-Day !!! 1976 FHC - 1980 DHC http://tinyurl.com/7rkonrx

V8Wedgehead · Postby **V8Wedgehead** » 03 Mar 2013 12:17

Michael-There are two ways to go about this. One is to on the top side of the transmission tunnel remove or modify the stock hand brake lever to mount an in line one way master cylinder to activate the rear brakes or on the underside of the tunnel that requires no modification to the handbrake and fabricating a bracket still using the same master cylinder. There is also a way to have both the hydraulic and cable but in both cases the arm rest between the seats will be chopped up or just totally removed. Best thing to do is dump the rear drums and convert to disc brakes. Here is the US I have a simple bunch of parts to do it. All ford stuff. Check out the pictures below.
Under side of the tunnel-

This is the top side of the tunnel-

This one uses the same master mounted further back and the cables

Michael
1980 TR8 FHC #0020

dursleyman · Postby **dursleyman** » 03 Mar 2013 15:26

Sounds like the Aussie annual vehicle inpection is a bit of a PITA.

I ran a hydraulic handbrake on my rally cars for more than 20 years here in the UK and it was never questioned on the test. Quite a few interested comments by testers who had never seen one before.

I always left the cables etc in place so it "looked" like they might work and no-one ever disconnected the hydraulics to find out.
Set up was quite a lot like the photos above with minor differences.

My Sierra Cosworth had 8" rears with racing tyres and I could lock them up with a flick of the handbrake at 100mph if I needed to.

Russ

1980 TR7 Sprint DHC
Dursley
UK

http://tr7russ.blogspot.co.uk/

Cobber · Postby **Cobber** » 04 Mar 2013 00:15

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by dursleyman

Sounds like the Aussie annual vehicle inpection is a bit of a PITA.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Fortunately only some states have annual inspections.
Here in Victoria we don't. The only time a vehicle needs inspection here is when there is a transfer of ownership, being registered for the first time in that state, being reregistered after a period of canceled/lapsed registration or after the police have slapped a 'canary' (yellow defect notice) on the car. 

"Keep calm, relax, focus on the problem & PULL THE BLOODY TRIGGER"

80'Triumph TR7, 73'Land Rover (Ford 351. V8),
'89 Ford Fairlane
'98 MG-F, 69'Ford F250.
76' Ford F100

Anonymous

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