[Chrysler300] Center Plane Brakes

["Bob Merritt" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This message was on another list but might be of interest. 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Burton Bouwkamp" 

Subject: [Imperial-Club] CENTERPLANE BRAKES


>From 1954 to 1960 I was a product engineer (called "resident engineer") at 
the Chrysler Jefferson Plant. During that time Chrysler came out with 
centerplane brakes. It was a great concept on paper - the shoe web floated 
between two aligning plates and the friction material aligned itself with 
the drum on application. I think the merchandizing name was "Total Contact 
Brakes".

Center plane brakes worked fine as brakes - but they were noisy! Brake 
squeak!!! We tried lots of different linings but it didn't help. 
(Although, it did give us an answer for top management. When they asked 
why the brakes squeaked on their personal car we answered, "you don't have 
the latest lining"). Finally - in desperation - we added raised plateaus 
to the backing plate to touch the side of the brake shoe. The idea was for 
the shoe/backing plate contact to work like putting your finger on the 
side of a vibrating tuning fork. The problem was that in production the 
dimensional variations in the brake were so great that on some cars this 
fix worked as intended and sometimes it resulted in dimensional 
interference that caused shoe returnability problems and/or shoes that 
would not align themselves with the brake drum unless something 
deflected - obviously compromising the "total contact" concept.

We fought this problem for years - and finally gave up trying to make the 
centerplane brake concept work. We decided to join the rest of the 
industry in using the "Lockheed" brake design.

Burt Bouwkamp



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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