More about the changes on the braking system on Rolls-Royce & Bentley models over the years..
Today we discuss brakes on the pre 1965 Rolls-Royce & Bentley cars. Prior to the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow series all the Rolls-Royce & Bentley cars had brake drums. There is one drum per wheel and each drum has two brake shoes. Some of the S2 Continentals and some of the S3's had split shoes at the front, so the shoe is split into four pieces.
Bentley and Rolls-Royce started off with non-vented front discs & then they went Ventilated in the early 1970's. On these cars, the difference between a Rolls-Royce or Bentley and a normal car is that they put two Calipers on each brake Disc.. most cars just do with one. Likely to give it more stopping power as it is a heavy car.
When you order a set of brake pads for Silver Shadow or a car up until the Bentley Arnage, which is when they went to a regular type of breaking caliper like a BMW with a single Caliper, you have effectively like two sets of pads, a normal car you will get 4 Brake Pads for each axle, on a Rolls Royce & Bentley you will get 8 because each Caliper takes 2 Brake Pads.
When you hear a set of Brake Pads referred to as an 'Axle Set' for Rolls-Royce & Bentley models from 1965 to 1980, it's because its enough Brake Pads to do both wheels on that Axle. So, Front Pads, 4 x Calipers, 8 x Brake Pads is one Axle set. For Rear Brake Pads for Rolls-Royce & Bentley models between 1965 to 1980, on the rear of the car they only have 2 Brake Calipers, so you get 4 x Brake Pads. On the very early Silver Shadow non-vented Brake Discs, you would only get 4 Brake Pads so you have to order 2 sets of Brake Pads to get a full set. They have now superseded that part number and you get 8 Brake Pads with it so again a full Axle set of Brake Pads. From 1998, when the Bentley Arnage came out they moved to a BMW set up and it has a single Brake Caliper so you only need 4 x Brake Pads for the front and 4 x Brake Pads for the back which is the same as for the Bentley GT. Another thing to mention on the rear Calipers of the earlier cars is that they do actually have a secondary set of Hand Brake pads, which are the little pads that hang off the bottom of the Caliper and are only used with the Handbrake.