ABS, slipping and sliding and so...

[101.36922@germany.net (Heiko Schwerdt)]

Hi out there,
there were a number of comments on brakes blocking and ABS and so on.
One of you ( I forgot who) has made some very right and very 
important comments.
ABS WILL NOT SHORTEN YOUR STOPPING DISTANCE!
The purpose of ABS is to keep the vehicle under control i.e. be able
to steer while applying the full brake force. 
Under certain circumstances the stopping distance will be longer than
without ABS.
Without ABS (ie. on all Type 3s) the following applies:
Independant of road surface (Bitumen, gravel, sand, ice...) or 
wether condition (dry, rain, snow...) the shortest way to stop your
car is with four blocked wheels.
I have done a safety training at the ADAC (german counterpart of AAA)
and it was really impressive how much you actually have to hammer
the brakes on a dry road.
Ok you cannot steer your car anymore and the car may start spinning
but you keep on going in the direction that you were going before 
the braking (This is a law of physics).
When poeple tell about cars breaking out and *jumping* off the road
they may have loosened the brake pedal as they recognised that 
the car started spinning. But the car, already being at an angle to 
the previous direction, will suddenly grab the road again and head
in the new direction.

Coming to the issue of blocked rear brakes.
I am convinced that the brake adjustment on that car was not right.
Every brake system layout tries to avoid that the rear brakes block
before the front brakes because your car is almost immediately out
of control.
It was said that the rear brakes were completely renewed. I would 
suspect that it is time to sevice the front brakes now.

Also one nice comment was that he/she never got the wheels to 
block. I think there are two possibilities: a) you haven另 tried
hard enough,   b) I don另 want to be your passenger. (sorry for this
sarcastic comment)

Anyway, this note is getting very long. I hope to have cleared up
some misunderstandings about ABS.

Heiko