Thursday, July 21, 2011

Give me a brake

We are now two families in the same apartment building with front loading trikes, surely a national record.

Here's a close-up of the brakes of friend and neighbour Fred's trike. Anybody know anything about them? The rear brake is operated by a large lever on the seat tube, the front ones with a small lever on the handle bar.

This trike is not a Christiania, but I'm still guessing it's problably made for that bizzarrely large load-cycling demographic in Denmark. Doesn't look Dutch to me. The Danes have a fantastic number of front loading trike brands. This might be a Family Rider, but the current models don't have these brakes.

With near horizontal drop-outs I feel he should try to source a Nexus 7 or 8 speed hub with a coaster brake. But that might be just a lot of time adjusting derailleurs speaking.

Fred says the brakes don't work. So we now have a trike each with shitty brakes. We have to get this sorted out before our kids are too large to fit in the boxes, or we loose patience and start zipping around with them anyway.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess there's a reason Family Riders have different brakes, then.

If you're talking about a big handbrake like attachment between your legs as you ride, I notice that workcycles don't recommend that you use those in hilly areas.

Also, at what level don't the brakes 'work'? On our Bakfiets the front hub break very weak and to make the back one work when coming downhill I have to apply it very enthusiastically.

I sometimes see brakes like this in the shop. Mostly they're pretty awful.

Anonymous said...

I guess there's a reason Family Riders have different brakes, then.

If you're talking about a big handbrake like attachment between your legs as you ride, I notice that workcycles don't recommend that you use those in hilly areas.

Also, at what level don't the brakes 'work'? On our Bakfiets the front hub break very weak and to make the back one work when coming downhill I have to apply it very enthusiastically.

I sometimes see brakes like this in the shop. Mostly they're pretty awful.

Northmark said...

From what I understand the brakes just add some slight friction, that's all.

And yes, there's a lever between the legs. Going down hill with only one hand on the bars while trying to stop, it's not such a great scenario.

I like hub and coaster brakes for many reasons, but I too experience that on heavily loaded cargo bikes going down hill, they're not as responsive as I would have liked.

Interesting that you see these brakes occasionally! I have an eye for this stuff, and am pretty sure I've never seen them around here.

CedarWood said...

Terribly late to the party here, but that looks similar to the Shimano rollerbrake on the rear of my cargobike.

Mine is easily removed for servicing by undoing the hub nuts, brake cable, and brake arm clamp, removing the wheel, and simply lifting the brake disc off the hub.

On the hub side of the brake disc, there's usually some grease around some captured balls. These balls clamp around the hub when you pull the brake, and sometimes adding more grease helps quite a bit.

Of course, yours might be entirely different...