Can anyone give any insight as to why FMC went to drum brakes on the rear of the '11 escape?

 

Did they ever have rear disc?

Cost is the one reason. The rears handle a smaller percentage of the load anyway, and seem to be easily controlled with antilock.

Brakes: Drum vs. Disc — Edmunds.com

This is a brand x thread discussion, but as you can see, it goes on and on about disc/drum vs. disc/disc.

Brakes. Why drums? - Tacoma World Forums

I have an Explorer with disc/disc and drum-in-hat E brake. It's a pita to buy both pads AND shoes with a brake job. My E brake works good as a PARKING brake, but the one in our Lexus is worthless.

With the brand x rear drums however, the E brake works just fine.

 

Because the platform has been around forever and it costs money to change things. You can't just slap on a disc brake system, it has to be engineered, tested, and certified, all of which costs money. Manufacturers won't usually spend money on something that old, they will wait until the rest of the suspension is redesigned before making significant changes to the brakes.

You'll have to wait until next year for four wheel disc.

 

Not dead certain but almost sure that earlyer model years had rear disks.

 

Until '08 the Hybrids had rear disk and all the others were drum. I think '08-'09 models had rear disk but they switched back to drum for all in '10.

The main reason was cost, but also because they realized they simply did not need disks in the rear, and also rear drum brakes last a lot longer and are a lot less problematic than disks.

 

So, I checked the spec. page and found that up through '07
V6 with 4wd had rear disks. Still don't know why they were eliminated.

 

I was parked next to an 2001 model the other day and it had disks. Simply a cost savings measure to go to drums plus disks do have a slight drag factor that impacts mpg.

 

I thought that it was the 4WD thing in that I haven't seen a 2WD with rear disks, but then again, I don't really care. The drums will do just as well as a disk on the rear as it is so lightly loaded it would be difficult to overheat the drums.
Drum brake shoes also drag a bit. When I was much younger, decades ago, I was taught by a mechanic at the Sunoco to adjust the front brake shoes for 1.5 turns after you gave it a good pull by hand. Rears, with a driveshaft and differential adding mass and drag, were to be adjusted to .5 turn. I think. And of course ChryCo was different in that it had two adjusters that rotated rather than the single star wheel adjuster on everyone else' system. It had two wheel cylinders for each of the front wheels, each with its own adjusting 'bolt' on the backside of the brake assembly to move the shoe pivot. They also had left-handed threads on the lug bolts on the left side. "Chrysler - different by design." You can say that again...
tom

 

:shrug: my 2002 v6 4wd has rear drums. No complaints though, the braking system is easily adequate for my useage. I'm not doing any pulling though.... I imagine a fairly heavy load and a long down hill slope would heat soak the brakes pretty good.

 

Double leading shoe brakes. Also found on Ford Courier PU's iirc.

Motorcycles had them just before discs. Some Suzuki's had 4 leading shoes--a drum on each side, both double leading shoe.

Makes for a more powerful drum brake.

 

2005 went to four wheel disc. That was one of things I didn't like about our 2004. bUT IT WASN'T WORTH THE AMOUNT OF MONEY WE WERE (dang caps lock!) going to save buying the previous model year. Why they sicthed back? I'm sure it is a cost savings for them that is not passed down to the consumer.