Old Technology

I just purchased myself 2010 V6 Tacoma TRD OFF ROAD and Ive been driving it for past 7 days now. This morning I just noticed that Rear brakes are Drum braks and I was really surprized that Toyota still use old Drum brakes. While my friend have old Frontier and even those have 4 Disc Brakes. Why Toyota went with drum brakes instead of Disc. I would expect a new truck to have disc's.

 

I thought about that too.

For what it's worth, the gas door doesn't lock either. Trying to stay old school.

 

my guess is because it works

a lot of new cars still roll with rear drums.

 

It's not all that "old"-Even tho it's not the high end 4 wheel discs it's perfectly acceptable for safely and efficiently stopping the truck. It's also cheaper while being perfectly safe...so they can spend the money elsewhere in production.

Considering most of the stopping power comes from the front end disc brakes anyways...It's not really all that big a deal imho.

 

There's a lot of things about these trucks that aren't updated technology.

But guess what? Drum brakes work and there's not a damn thing wrong with them.

If these trucks had all the updated things that all the other cars/trucks have - they'd cost $10,000 more.

 

Rear disks are a bitch to get off because of the emergency brake. Drums work fine.
Rear Disks are just a selling point.

 

I remember when I got my taco how impressed I was with the stopping power. Having rear disc isn't all its cracked up to be for a truck. Sports cars, yeah, fine. But when was the last time you had brake fade in the rear of your truck.

Even when towing and the extra tounge weight on the rear, the drums still only provide something like 15-20% of the total braking force.

And don't the X-Runners have rear disc?

 

yep. Suprisingly the tundra has the same front calipers as the tacoma. But the tundra is much heavier. I would presume than the taco has much better stoping distance than even the tundra

 

The crazy thing is that I don't think the drums get used that much. I have the original stock drum shoes on my 96' and the thng has 223,000 miles. I checked them last year. They look like they've barely had any wear!

 

To my understanding the rear brakes in majority of vehicles account for 20% of braking but their main porpose is to keep the rear end in a stright line when braking. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Thats weird I was always taught to change the rear pads everyother time you change the front pads.

 

the XR's come with rear drum brakes just like our trucks...but the FJ cruiser comes with rear disc brakes and are the same lug pattern as our trucks (6x5.5)...i'm sure you could find 1 in your local junk yard and pull the rear discs off if you wanted to upgrade...

 

I was surprised that my 07 had rear drums- I don't mind them, I feel like they are lower maintenance? But I was surprised nonetheless Just seemed kinda oldschool. No worries- I'm keepin em!

 

I remember reading an article that said Toyota's "official" reason for this is because they work better in wet conditions, but off the record, they admitted it was because they are cheaper.

 

It's actually quite the opposite, drum brakes are more prone to failure in wet conditions.

 

Same here, my 97 went to the crusher with the original rear brakes.