Hydraulic brake options?

7 posts in this topic

Posted

What kind of hydraulic braking options do I have? We have disc brake and I think I've also seen hydraulic drum? Can the mechanical drums on my A model be converted to hydraulic? Has anybody ever made their own custom disc or drum set up? I was brainstorming and thinking of the possibilities of a dual handbrake setup. Kind of like turning Brakes in a sand rail?  I'm just sitting here in my garage staring at my Shovelhead brainstorming. Or maybe we could call it dreaming.

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Posted

Check out Matco right there in Salt Lake. www.matcomfg.com    If your looking to change to hyd. brakes it seems that Matco is the most reasenable and are very helpful. 

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Posted

I second the Matco.  It is pretty much the standard that kit plane manufactures are using.  The wheel can always be reinvented, but it normally turns out that round seems to work best.

:BC:

 

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Posted

Ha! Right after I posted this I ended up on the Matco website. Didn't even realize they're here in Salt Lake that's great to know.  I'm going to be pushing the firewall out a couple of inches for more leg room. That would probably be the perfect time to adapt hydraulic Master cylinders to the new pedals.

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Posted

While you are at it you might as well change the lower master cylinder attachment point from the rudder bar to the floor / firewall. This seem to correct the geometry of the master cylinders and gives you better braking over the stock setup. I'm sure someone on here can provide you with instructions on how they did it. I will eventually be doing it to mine.  

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Posted

The best advise I can give you and the best advise you are going to get , is if you are going to do your own thing is to do your homework regarding the physics of braking systems. Otherwise you will invariably be floundering in why shit isn't working when you think it should. At the time I started it was about 2002 and my learning curve began to show me most of what I was seeing at that time was a lot of mythology and folklore in online discussions. back then  the first thing I saw  done on an avid that was effectively concrete was done by a guy named larry martin. What made it concrete was that he talked to george happ of matco and was told what to do and what leverage it would produce. If you want to know what it was larry did just look at what Nick or nlappos has illustrated and done to his avid setup posted and pictured in various places on this forum. At the time that larry did his work the only noteworthy that transpired was someone taking it upon themselves personally to email contact him to inform him his methodology for determining leverage was wrong....beyond that no one really seemed to care at the time. 

I followed larry's lead with my own work, going  marginally shorter with my master cylinders and developing a retrofit brake pedal to get some required structural revisions for line psi development. Joey/c5engineer did a thread  called gocart to matco brakes on this forum utilizing my revamped brake pedal design. If you see an avid with brake pedals like what are featured in that thread they are on the plane because I built them.Easy to install, pain in the butt to design and then build. You will see a few avids out there utilizing and flying with that design. With novice pilots and within certain conditions you have to be aware of how powerful the brakes can be.

For the avid, other designs like the parrellogram or the latest fad of indirect linkage design can work and firstly be made to look good and workable on paper. the reality of math on paper is that it is always going to be accurate but in practice of application will typically be shown to be incomplete especially where any condition of leverage is involved. Picture_brakes_013.thumb.jpg.7b40cb256f6

 

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Posted

I am a new Avid owner and have discovered the geometric problems with the standard Matco brakes.  I would like to consider replacing the rudder and brake pedals with something that is better and understand that you have developed such a system.  If that is true, please send me the specs and costs.

Thanks,

Jim Bowerman

N220AP

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