NOS Maico VW 1500 brakes:
Restored Maico VW 1500 brakes:
There's not much information available on Maico brakes in English, but I found an article by Frank O. Hrachowy in the June 2005 issue of Automobilhistorische Nachrichten (Historic Automobile News, the newsletter of the Automobilhistorische Gesellschaft e.V., the Automobile Historical Society of Germany) which provides some enlightening information on the Maico story.
Better known as a motorcycle manufacturer, Maico realized they needed to develop other products to keep their facilities running during the seasonal downtime in motorcycle production. In 1962 the company acquired rights to a patent for a new disc brake system developed by OJR (Oswald Josef Rosamowski). This design, known as the "ring-type" disc brake, employed a flat ring at outer edge of the hub as the friction surface for the brake pads, in contrast to the now-common central brake rotor configuration. They were easy to assemble, lightweight, and inexpensive, potentially bringing the benefits of disc brakes, previously only seen on expensive sports and luxury cars, to a much wider audience. Sensing an opportunity, Maico made their VW 1200 conversion available to the public beginning in 1963.
In 1963 a VW 1200 with Maico disc brakes was tested by Auto, Motor und Sport, who, while impressed by the braking performance, wondered whether they were enough of an improvement over the standard VW drum brakes to be worthwhile. This opinion seemed to be shared by others who tested Maico brakes at the time as well.
[image courtesy of Automobilhistorische Gesellschaft e.V.]
By 1964 Maico brake conversions were available for the VW 1200 and 1500 (and respective Karmann-Ghias), the Porsche 356, and the Peugeot 404. Time was working against Maico, though, as disc brakes were fast becoming standard equipment on more and more cars, including the VW 1600 beginning in the fall of 1965. Ultimately Maico's disc brakes were a failure as a business venture, making them that much rarer and more desirable to vintage performance enthusiasts today.
Maico brakes were imported to the United States for a few years by Poly Pad Imports (seen here in Poly Pad's 1967 catalog, and in a press announcement here), and were also apparently distributed for a short time by EMPI. They seem to have been popular in Australia, maybe because the introduction of disc brakes to the VW line occurred later there than in Europe and the U.S.
In addition to Hrachowy's article in Automobilhistorische Nachrichten (a pdf of which can be downloaded here), information on Maico brakes can also be found in Auto, Motor und Sport (August 1963, viewable here), Gute Fahrt (July 1964), Foreign Car Guide (March 1964), and Hobby (June 19, 1963, the first part of which can be seen here).
Thanks again to Aaron for the photos.
3 comments:
the photos are amazing, and the Maico disc brake conversion for the VW 1500 sound incredible and seriously, you are the only place i found more info on this, i saw this in a magazine.
Cheers & thanks,
Ben
As a BIKE fanatic, I'm enamored with the notion of using these discs & calipers as a "Faux-Leading-Shoe" fake 4LS front DRUM hub, for a motorcycle. If you're really all that interested in brakes you've surely got to check out the 4LS drums, and more to the point the "inboard disc" (VERY similar to this VW Maico item) from the Honda VTR250F and MVX250F and perhaps best known from the CBX550F, due to the wire-spoke conversion which best illustrates the similarity to the 4LS drum hubs of old, though of course this conversion is ridiculously heavy due to the bolt-up spoke-flange plates & assembly hardware even more so than the original equipment itself which is also very heavy.
Well I suppose it's the discs themselves, from the Honda CBX550F etc, (not CB550F to be clear, I'm talkin' CBX550F - and not CBX750F either. A whole other kettle of fish right there!) IF there's any compatibility with these MAICO brakes, perhaps through the use of some sort of special adapter/mount which would make use of their floating nature - Their advantage wouldn't be so much about the floating disc thing itself as the double-thick sandwich layered nature of these Honda discs. Something not unlike the discs on my "CB900K0 Bol Bomber", from CB1100RC/CB1100RD, GL1100A, the '81-'82 CBX1050 six-cylinder - though these are fixed discs and the caliper is on the outside, and they're a heck of a lot bigger at 296mm vs the 230mm of the "inboard disc" variety.
I'd LIKE to think I've figured out a way to emulate the 4LS drum brakes another, better way. Not just in terms of shaving weight, but also including substantially larger discs! I'm WORKING on using the central wheel hub/core from the Honda PC800 Pacific Coast, if only because the GL1500 Gold-Wing front wheel which I had chopped up turned out to have hollow cast spokes which were too thin-walled when I cut through them, and the resultant wire-spoke count would need to be some multiple of 9 or rather 18 I should say, and the 3.0x18" rim I'd bought is a 40-spoke! The GL1500 comes with dual 296mm discs which is good for a '70s-'80s Superbike and could upgrade to 316mm which is even good enough for a late '90s through Y2K+ Sport-Bike. The PC800 Pacific-Coast comes with 276mm discs, like a bone-stock CB900F Super-Sport or GL1000 first generation Gold-Wing, etc (the biggest criticism against these bikes was the brakes, their weakest link) but can be upgraded to 296mm to at least bring it up to par. With the GL1500 Gold-Wing aftermarket "Ring Of Fire" rotor shrouds, it hopefully might turn out looking like a proper 4LS (four-leading-shoe) DRUM front brake, one which would finally be adequate for the type of "Hailwood Replica" CBX1000 projects people are building as of late.
Well I guess that's the thing about CAR brakes, is the inside of the wheel itself limits the disc diameter. Well, then again so too with the motorcycle wheels..... EITHER which way, one has to look at discs such at this, the inside-out type, as a rather convenient way to put a maximum size of disc WITHIN a given limitation.
The best example of this in MOTORCYCLE terms, would be the Ghezzi-Brian PERIMETER DISC brakes, also used on the BUELL 1125R & 1125CR etc, where it's known as the "ZTL" (Zero Torsional Load) wheel - Buell's concept perhaps best explains how this removes torsional loading from the spokes and the wheel can now be built in pure radial arrangement. Pretty cool stuff. I'd like to some day replicate it with a valanced/shouldered/flanged type wire-spoke rim, Borrani "Rinforzatto" for instance, laced to an old Chopper "SPOOL" type minimalist/miniature hub. Could really be something imho, and with a 3.0x16" Borrani rim (I've got several - should lace up some AUTO hubs to a handful of 'em) the smaller diameter would mean the discs could still be a manageable size and not overly heavy.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
(CONT, pt.2)
I suppose it depends on how much side-to-side clearance you've got inboard of the VW Spindle, but if a person were trying to replicate something like the MAICO system, and wanted to absolutely maximize braking power, the perimeter disc thing with mounting at the absolute outer rim lip, right next to the tire bead itself let's say, could allow some truly extraordinary disc brakes just an absolute maximum stopping grunt - RATHER than setting an arbitrary limitation such as the circle of lug-nut bolts in the first place!
I mean, when you compare disc brakes to drum brakes on a vintage MOTORCYCLE, especially early first-gen or 2nd-gen discs (from mid-'60s Campagnolo 230mm discs on the likes of the Egli-Vincent & the MV Agusta 4C6 "Black Pig", & more to the point the famous '68-'69 CB750K0 Sand-Cast with it's 296mm single disc, on through to the early to mid '80s Superbikes with typically 276mm dished one-piece thin stainless rotors & sometimes 296mm double-thick sandwich type dual-discs like I've got on the bike now - Okay so for the sake of argument especially the WEIGHT argument which is about the most prescient point here, we should compare the dual 276mm dished rotors with a decent 260mm 4LS drum hub, 'cause first of all the dimensions are about right, and secondly the weight's about on par - both in terms of the rolling inertia of the wheel's total spinning mass (how much mass and where it's distributed) AND when you add up the calipers & arrive at the the whole "un-sprung mass" of the disc system, they've gotta be a decent comparison. The nominal diameter of the disc is larger than the actual swept area of it, and an average figure for radius/leverage of that disc is somewhere just outboard of the center of the disc-brake's pad and/or swept-area, meaning a 276mm disc ISN'T bigger than a 260mm drum. Of course the drum's working radius/leverage is a fixed diameter which is then directly/linearly multiplied by a greater width in that drum and/or shoe (which is how I managed to squeeze out 12%-14% greater efficiency out of the Suzuki GT750J/GT550J 4LS drum on my daughter's "KZ440LOL" project, using cut/filed down shoes from the single-sided T500 Titan/Cobra 2LS drum hub.)
ANYWAY, yeah - the drum is actually more effective in terms of initial BITE. Twin-leading-shoe drums weren't typically fitted to CARS (or street-bike rear wheels) 'cause they're less effective in a backwards direction, reversing or stopping on a hill etc, when they can be thought of as a twin-TRAILING-shoe arrangement. The leading shoe is typically something like 27% or 28% (purportedly, don't ask ME to explain the math) stronger braking force. Which means the twin-leading arrangement is 13%-14% stronger due to only one shoe being modified. That's just ONE way to increase the power of a drum brake.
The main problems with drums, as I'm sure you know all too well, is FADE which results from OVERHEATING. Better ventilation with attention to where the air flows not just how much, will cool the brake as it operates, keeping things from overheating & fading.
Now, I'm mostly thinking of "AL-FIN" type drums, composite Aluminum hubs with cast-in Iron drum liners, but it actually HELPS if you're talking about a BELL-type one-piece cast Iron drum, 'cause you can CROSS-DRILL the latter type much like a disc-brake. And this makes for some SERIOUS improvement. The old Muscle-Car guys used to do this mod, and it's supposedly got all the "bite" of an actual DISC conversion. There's way better information on this out there on the muscle-car forums.
Just a few suggestions on how to kick things up a notch - on either a "cost unlimited" OR the "budget-rebuild" type of project.
-Sigh.
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