hmmm... what would you do? STEP ON THE BRAKE PEDAL.

with the exception of Wrench007, there are a lot of STUPID comments on here about using your Parking Brake or putting the transmission in reverse.

All vehicles since like 1982 have dual system brakes. Your primary circuit is for the fronts and your secondary circuit is for the rears.

When you blow a brake line you will have TONS of brake pedal travel, but if you step on it you will still stop. Not quite as quick, but still WAY QUICKER than screwing around with your parking brake.

So if it happens to you, slow down and take it easy till you get it fixed. You will be just fine.

Or, throw it in reverse and then post pictures!

 

Not stupid at all.
This DID happen to me and with the pedal pressed to the floor, the truck may have stopped after many hundreds of feet which is not nearly quick enough for my taste.

As you know, the front brakes own the majority the stopping effect of any vehicle so when they fail, only so much pressure can be applied to the already weak rear brakes. Knowing when to downshift and feather the e-/p-brake is important to know. Thinking otherwise is stupid.

Shifting into reverse is something I have never tried, or even want to.

 

You live in near-flat Indiana, so I'll grant you a little leniancy in this ignorant statement.

Otherwise come on out here and we'll show you how much fun it is going down an 8% grade with hot brakes, let alone 2 brakes instead of 4.

 

They showed that on Mythbusters also with a Crown Vic. The guy was at 45 MPH, I think, and put it in park and reverse and they both shut off the engine and he coasted to a stop.

 

Yes, your front brakes do the majority of the stopping. But NOT because the rear brakes are weak. Its because the front wheels carry the majority of the truck weight (assuming most truck beds are usually empty)

The reason you can't brake heavier on the rear is that the tires will lock up and skid. If you mash the brake pedal you will just set of ABS on the rear brakes.

The parking brakes are on the rear 2 brakes.

So when the front brakes fail, the limiting factor on how fast you stop is the amount of friction force between your rear wheels and the road.

Providing that nothing else is wrong, your service brakes should be more than sufficient to lock up the rear wheels when you slam on the brakes with a primary circuit failure. At that point, using your parking brake will not gain anything because the rears are already locked.

As for the Roush F150 comment... if your fronts fail and you overheat your rears... what good will the parking brake do? The drum-in-hat rear rotor setup will give you overheated parking brakes too...

 

^ what he said. Lol

But the answer about the weight of the bed is not 100% correct. Its because of inertia and the weight being thrown forward as the car brakes.now a days there is a perportioning valve built into the master that delays pressure to the rear. Unless you don't have abs, trust me these trucks will not lock up. These computers now think 1000000 times faster then us and when abs kicks on that pump as basically pumping that brake pedal 30+ times a second. Let's see you try that one

A lot of trucks back in the day had a mechanism called a height sensing valve that determined brake pressure to the rear not really used anymore.

 

^ what he said.

weight is thrown on the front tires. The harder you brake, the more traction you get on the front tires. I think the back tires lose a little bit of traction.