How much longer do drum brakes go

[lasyrabbit]

I would like to have a maintenance free brake on the rear wheel as I just cannot be bothered to adjust another pad for a very long time.

Will a drum brake meet this requirement?

[Lance Dopestrong]

Depends on the make, model, how well you set it up, and how you ride the bike. They certainly have the potential to be very low maintenance.

[Brucey]

with SA drums, that is pretty much it. Just an occasional adjustment of the barrel adjuster is required. Balanced against that, getting the rear wheel in and out takes a bit longer.

cheers

[millimole]

Coaster hub brakes are the way to go for (almost) zero maintenance.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly using hovercraft full of eels.

[Cyril Haearn]

Coaster hub brakes are the way to go for (almost) zero maintenance.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my gormless idiot phone.

Right again, I just adjusted mine for the first time in nearly a year, took a couple of minutes
Not so good if one rides in a hilly area unfortunately
Plus One for having several brakes

[Brucey]

Coaster hub brakes are the way to go for (almost) zero maintenance.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my gormless idiot phone.

coaster brakes (hub brakes that are actuated by back-pedalling) are very simple brakes (in singlespeed form) that are used in their millions on all kinds of basic roadsters. However they have a few downsides too, specifically

- the brake is metal on metal and runs in grease; the grease needs to be replenished (typically once every few years )
- the metal brake wear debris mixes in with the grease that lubricates the rest of the hub
- the brake has wearing parts that you can't always buy as spare parts
- there is a fairly limited choice of IGHs with coaster brakes. No derailleur options.
- in IGH form the mechanism in some cases is significantly more complicated than in the non-coaster brake form of the hub (*)
- these brakes are not suitable for use in hilly terrain; they tend to overheat (and need to be regreased immediately after ) on a long downhill.
- the brake is actuated via backwards pedalling torque; the mechanism to do this typically causes a small amount of parasitic drag all the time. Depending on the hub (even ones of the same type can vary) the parasitic drag may or may not be noticeable.

(*) many Sachs/SRAM hubs were the exception to this; being designed for coaster brakes from the word 'go' some models had virtually identical internal parts apart from the brake mechanism. However SRAM have stopped making IGHs of any kind which has practically halved the number of coaster brake equipped IGHs which were worth having.

IME by contrast SA drum brakes have few downsides to them. How long do they last...? Well I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a brake of this type with linings that were worn out.

Maybe the OP could say what kind of gears they have?

cheers

[millimole]

Blimey Brucey! I toured throughout the UK and France in the 1970s with a Coaster Hub brake, and that hub (Sturmey AWC I think) was still in infrequent use until about 10 years ago - and was never greased or dismantled, I never noticed any drag. One of my current bikes had a more modern Sturmey Archer coaster hub + IHG and there's no noticeable drag on that either. I've had that about 15 years, and although it never goes very far I've never had to do any maintenance on it.
They aren't the right solution for every situation, and they do take some getting used to, but I don't think they have as many practical (as opposed to theoretical) downsides as you suggest!

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly using hovercraft full of eels.

[Brucey]

I've seen the insides of lots of coaster brake hubs, on a, uh, 'non-voluntary' basis.... Almost certainly more than I should have done, given the proportion of bikes that are fitted with them.

Oddly enough prior to the mid 1930s, I am given to understand that the sturmey coaster brake 3s hub was a fairly popular thing even in the UK. But following the introduction of SA's 'proper' expanding drum brake hub, the coaster brake version mainly became the province of the Dutch. The AWC was also responsible for SA getting sued in the USA; prior to ~1982 the only version of the AWC had a neutral between 2 and 3 that also disabled the brake. A bicycle manufacturer in the USA was crazy enough to install this as the only brake on their bikes... so we have them to thank for all the NIG nonsense that was deemed 'necessary' in subsequent years.

IME the NIG arrangement is responsible for most of the blow-ups in current SA hubs. These seem to fall into two categories

a) where the actuator plate comes off the driver or breaks, and the shrapnel sees off the rest of the hub PDQ and/or
b) where the gear is run when out of adjustment and the hub smashes itself to bits.

In the latter case Joe Bloggs the pedaller has no idea the adjustment is bad because (unlike the older hubs) there is no neutral when the gear is out of adjustment. In the older hubs the neutral was a big hint that something was wrong; big enough to penetrate the consciousness of even the most dull-witted rider. With an NIG hub you need to be more pro-active about adjustment.

If a coaster brake is fitted a NIG hub has twice as many pawls to break and the actuator plate sees at least twice the action. The old AWC was a bit problematic but the current versions have a whole different raft of potential problems.

cheers

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[Brucey]

supercommuter thread;

https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70632

cheers