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Mon Nov 03, 2014 7:22 am

Recently purchased a rail that has front brakes , ( Drum all around) and I think they will be more trouble then there worth due to locking up and loosing steering.
Would it be worth putting residual valve in? I mainly drive trails in OW's

Mon Nov 03, 2014 8:23 am

I normally only run rear brakes, but there has been times where front brakes would have helped. I would just put a proportioning valve in it so the front doesn’t lock up and see how that goes.

Mon Nov 03, 2014 8:42 am

Yes you should have front brakes. to avoid the front locking up, simple switch the wheel cylinders from the front to the back. it works great and off roaders have been doing it for years, no need for a residual valve. and it costs nothing.. those are my favorite fix's.

Mon Nov 03, 2014 10:03 am

It's a play thing wrote: Yes you should have front brakes. to avoid the front locking up, simple switch the wheel cylinders from the front to the back. it works great and off roaders have been doing it for years, no need for a residual valve. and it costs nothing.. those are my favorite fix's.

I did that to my rail, still locks up too easy. it is perfect for the street, but in the dirt i've learned to not hit the breaks hard. get the proportioning valve. its like 60 bucks at summit. or get rear disks, also a better option.

Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:39 pm

Leaning toward rear disks....My Baja had problems with front wheels locking up in the dirt so I'm sure the rail will be worse. Appreciate everyone's suggestions though.

Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:48 pm

One of my buddies funs 17mm rear cylinders up front and 23.8mm front super beetle cylinders in the back with stock bug drums. It works perfectly and stops hard. The only thing you have to do to make the super beetle front cylinders fit bug backing plates is to slot the mounting bolt hole a mm or so. A worm-tail file made fast work of this for me. Only took me 15 seconds for each backing plate. No big deal. The super cylinders are wider than the standard cylinders, but if you back off the adjusting stars all the way the drum just slides over the shoes. Perfect.

Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:08 am

I would not drive a buggy in the desert or woods with out front brakes, sand dunes I can live with out them.

Casey

Sat Nov 08, 2014 9:38 am

Having ran both ways (brakes and no brakes on the front) I can say this. If you're playing in the sand only then no, probably not necessary, but if you're playing on trails or the streets then yes, by all means run brakes on the front.

Rear braking only will fade very quickly when you start to push it with heavy offroad use. I ran only type 3 rears for a long time, and on long runs with lots of use they would become almost useless at times, and downright scary too when it happened!

My setup now is all drums, 55 rear shoes and cylinders on the front and type 3 rear brakes on the back. It works very well without ever locking up the front so far.