MTFCA Forum

As a caretaker of 5 Model T’s (at the moment), I’d like to put a question out to you guys are are currently running discs. I’m contemplating putting them on a small drum Rux and putting that rear into my ‘26 RPU. I drive it a lot, but it’s not what we normally take on the big tours. My question is this: once you have the discs on one of them, do you find yourself “over driving” a T that has standard brakes? I don’t want to put myself into a mindset that “ I should have taken the Pickup and not the Touring car on this tour. “. I don’t really care for the appearance of the large drum discs but have seen enough of the small drum versions to be pretty comfortable with how they look. We typically put a couple hundred miles on a T in a week here in southern New Jersey and do venture into more populated areas on the weekends. The large drums standard brakes do fine until I get into the hills of Maryland. Just wondering what others have to say about them.

I just built a 1913 speedster and put disc brakes on it. In my opinion, it was money well spent! After driving that car and then jumping into one of my other T's I really miss the discs. I will be doing discs on my touring this winter and probably my Tudor next year. It is a great peace of mind that you can actually stop.

When the rubber meets the road... it’s still just rear wheel brakes!

A car with well adjusted Rockies that can lock up both wheels will stop with the same effort and in the same distance... but the car with disc brakes will stop smoother, with more balanced effort, with no adjustments, and will cool better so you can stop more often in less time without the brakes fading. Oh yeah... they work going backwards too

If you have nondemountable wheels it is a pain if you have a flat or need to remove the wheel for any reason. The unit on the axle has to be removed every time and reset and shimmed when you reinstall the wheel. With the demountable wheels it is not a problem since the hub and spokes stay on the car. Remember as someone already stated above, no matter what system you have for brakes, you only have a three inch square on the road to grab the road and stop you. Have fun but be safe. Frank

Frank surely you mean non-demountable wheels in your first sentence. From my limited experience I didn’t need to remove a non-demountable wheel as I only suffered one flat and I changed the tube with the wheel still on the car. Mind you I prefer demountable rims on a car used for longer tours.
I don’t have disc brakes on any of my Ts but I’ve installed several sets. I much prefer the customer to pay extra for the optional flexible line connecting the wheel cylinder to the axle. JMHO

I'm running disks on two cars, RM brakes on another and my TT is standard T brakes. I drive many miles in the mountains of Montana and Idaho. You just can't beat the disk brakes for greatly upping the safety factor in hills and mountains. As for hopping in a car with no disk brakes, it's not a problem.

Thanks for the reply’s.

Discs are great. I put them on my 22 touring. Planning on adding them to some of my others. They work going forward and REVERSE, dry and wet. There is no need to wash the wheels after driving in wet conditions. As far as overdriving, we only travel as fast as the slowest car anyway.
Go ahead, put them on, along with the ruckstell, then give me a call, we'll go driving.

Yes, Tony, you are right. I meant non demountables but appearantly had my head somewhere else,but I corrected it. The only other thing with the disc brakes that frustrated me was the end play of the rear axle was too great and the discs kept draining the fluid every time I went around the corner.
I bought the freshly rebuilt ruckstell axle for over top dollar from a so called expert model T mechanics shop in 2004 but soon after I had to have the axle rebuilt again. With Rockies it didn’t cause concern but when I installed the disc brakes in 2014 is when I realized I had to have the axel rebuilt again due to the excessive end play.

I installed the disc brake kit from Birdhaven on my '23 Touring 3 years ago. It is basically a bolt on operation and works great. Now I wouldn't drive the car without them.

I am very pleased with discs. One thing to keep in mind, any rear wheel wobble will result in a two pump brake. I started with a junk ruckstell with bent axles. New axles made all the difference in the world.

The poster in a new thread asked about disk brakes. I am bringing this previous thread to the top in response.

I didn’t see this thread and responded to the other. We need to merge.