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Comment by metalman | Hacker News Reader

the best upgrade for brakes would be to keep them totaly mechanical, but move to indoard brakes, there would be no flex lines, or much shorter and robust flex lines, sprung mass will be reduced, improving handling , and reducing wieght, airodynamics and heat rejection can be refined further, center of mass is now better, and overall efficiency will see a significant improvement, with a statistical improvement in saftey due to better braking and manouverability. vs a gadjet that is not needed

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I wonder how strong the driveshafts would have to be to handle all the braking torque transmitted through them. Dissipating the heat would also be an interesting problem. Also reduced clearance and/or increased drivetrain complexity and a million other things.

There are good reasons why people haven't moved away from old school rotors, pads & calipers right at the wheel hub, for basically any application.

My guess is torque isn't as big of an issue since on acceleration you break traction before anything snaps. The big issue in my mind is technically cooling and practically packaging since you already have the space inside the wheels.

I know inboards are used on some formula student cars in the rear (on some karts as well?) but I haven't looked up the issues they have with them.

Brake torque is far higher than engine torque and can be applied at speeds where tire traction is far greater - at least at the front. The rear makes far more sense for this application - assuming a performance RWD or AWD vehicle, the rear driveshafts already handle most of the acceleration load, and max rear braking load is practically severely limited by the load transfer to the front.

Formula student cars and other open-wheelers have far greater packaging flexibility as well. A quick search doesn't bring up a whole lot of encouraging discussions on FSAE and related places re: inboard brakes, please share if you've seen such.

Interesting take! Is this suggestion for performance cars only or were you omagining this would be an imporvement for every car?

Personally, I wouldnt love having needing to have a lift to swap my brake pads, or to dissasemble my suspension and pull apart the half shaft to replace my rotors

For it to be unsprung, you either need a solid axle or you're relying on a CV joint. Putting a CV joint in the mechanical path for braking at highway speeds will definitely kill people.

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