Brake line locks

[Apache]

Are brake line locks road legal?

The reason I ask is that a friend suggested this as a means of locking a spinning wheel when you're stuck. For instance, if you could lock a line closed so no brake force was applied to a driving wheel, you could put your foot on the brake, lock the wheel with no traction and all the drive would go to the others. I reckon it would be a cheap way of producing a diff lock effect in some circumstances.

[Shropshire Tim]

Short answer- Yes!

As long as they're installed to MOT standards, and you let your insurance company know, it's all good.

Go for the soloniod operated type, rather than the mechanical type, and have it plumbed in so that it only operates when you've got your finger on the button. That way there's never any danger of activating the system by accident.

I had one made by Biondi on an old race car, and it worked fine for years.

HTH.

[Apache]

Hmmm, interesting.

I was thinking allsorts of complex failsafes such as only operates when in 4 wheel drive at speeds less than 5mph...

Keeping your finger on the button is a lot simpler! I could see that being REALLY useful.

[marky]

Fiddler Brakes?

[stormforce]

its the same type of thing a tractor has when one wheel is spinning and it locks the spinning wheel to turn the same as the other but they just call it a diff lock but on a seperate pedal

[Apache]

Not a diff lock as such. You lock the wheel thats spinning with the brake pedal, but use a valve to cut the fluid feed to the wheel that has traction, therefore the brake only operates on the wheel with no tra\ction, forcing drive to the wheel with traction.

Hey presto, difflock effect without locking diff prices!

Trouble is, you'd have to lock out the braking effect from the front wheels too...