# Electric disk breaking



## AmaToolBox (May 11, 2017)

I am working on converting my son's at to electric, and one of the issues he has is pulling the breaks on the quad, so I started researching electric disk breaks but can't find any reviews or input on them. So here I am creating another thread!

Essentially I am looking for input and opinions on an electric disk break that is strong enough to stop a quad at a reasonable rate.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk


----------



## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

I would be surprised if you can find any. As might be apparent from the following comments, I have been watching for this technology...

There are mechanical caliper designs, including products intended for go-carts or other small vehicles, and those actuated by air on heavy trucks; any air brake uses an air cylinder to push, pull, or turn a shaft to apply the brake. The parking function of many recent cars pushes the pistons of the rear brake calipers (if they are the floating type), or applies a separate mechanical caliper (particularly in very high performance models), so these are mechanical disk brakes as well. A sort of reasonable example would the this one from Brembo.

Any mechanical caliper could be operated by a motor, but it would not be trivial to build a suitable control system to modulate the braking force.

There are electrically operated disk parking brakes, now common on production cars. They normally mount a motor directly on the caliper (working like cable actuated parking feature of sliding calipers), but in some BMWs they just replace the traditional handle, pulling on a cable to the caliper. The problem with electric parking brakes in general is that they are just on-off, with no controlled modulation.

There is one oddball system: trailer hardware supplier AL-KO sells a system called ATC to apply the brakes on a European-style trailer by pulling on the rods or cables that apply the brakes. Although these are normally mechanically actuated drum brakes, they could be mechanical disks. The system applies a controlled force, but it would take serious work to redesign the controls to use it as a normal braking system.

Someday Siemens VDO may put their Electronic Wedge Brake into production. It is a computer-controlled and electrically-powered disk brake caliper for cars, and it works very well. Because it would be "drive-by-wire" (no hydraulic connection to the brake pedal), it has not yet been accepted by any company for use on a production vehicle. It is not available for purchase, and if it were it would be very expensive compared to a quad, or even a typical DIY car conversion.


----------

