Carl at Tuolomne Bikes indicated his rear disc is a captain brake and his stoker gets to operate the rear rim brake. He says one of the reasons is to delay the wearing out of the sidewalls of the rear rim.
I'm not super worried by the rim-wear part of it, but I think that would be a swank setup and it may be the move. I'm one of those who believes hydraulic actuation is flat out superior to cable actuation, and in my book if you are going to bother to run disc brakes, it's kind of obvious to me that the desirable move is hydraulics. I think the longer a cable run goes, the worse the brakes feel in your hands. Cable actuated front brakes feel fantastic, perfect, in the hand. Rear brakes on a single bike, a good mechanic can set them up to feel pretty OK, acceptable, and all that. A cable actuated rear tandem brake should be the worst feeling brake in the stable. Hydraulic actuation is the perfect solution to a really long housing run, I think. The captain's right hand will feel as connected to the rear brake as their left is connected to the front. The stoker will have a nice short cable run for the rear rim brake. So, in summary this switch would put the captain in control of much "more" braking, would radically improve the hand feel of the captain rear brake, and would give the stoker a very solid auxiliary brake to use only as needed, relegating any rear rim-heating and rim-wear to extreme situations. With a normal brake lever the stoker can use more of a 'pump' method than a 'drag' method so as to manage rim-heat build up. I love that idea. It's another win-win-win. I've reminded myself that the HubbuHubbuH does in fact have hydro-tubing guides all the way up to the captain. I just need to check my roll of hydro-tubing to make sure I have enough. Swapping the brake levers between captain and stoker would be a ~1 hour job. When my guest-stoker comes over we may take it out one day, then do the swap and take it out again the next, and see what we think. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA On Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 9:51:07 AM UTC-8 tuolumne bikes wrote: > I switched mine so the (cable) disc is the main brake. If 650B rim brake > rims are going to go extinct, I don't see any point in wearing one out, and > the back of a tandem takes a lot of the braking load. I think you could > replace lots of discs and pads for the price of rebuilding the wheel. The > stoker has an XC thumbshifter controlling the v-brake which works better > than you might think for a drag brake and works great as a parking brake. > She almost never uses the drag brake. We haven't had problems with > overheating the disc brake even with touring loads. > > I'm not big on disc brakes since rim brakes are so simple and meet my > needs. But I won't be building wheels for loaded tandem touring myself so > the replacement cost for wearing out the rim is significant. > > Carl > > On Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 7:55:11 AM UTC-8 Patrick Cronin wrote: > >> Bill, >> >> I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how that hydraulic lever/caliper >> works as a tandem brake compared to a drag brake set up. My HHH has a Paul >> Klamper linked to a DuraAce bar-end shifter on the stoker's bosco end. The >> captain's controls are XTR V-brakes like yours. My stokers are used to >> actuating an Arai drum brake with a friction shifter, so my thinking was >> that setting up the HHH with a drag function, rather than with a >> traditional lever, would be most similar. In practice, that has held only >> somewhat true because the efficiency of the Klamper is exponentially >> greater than a drum; my 4-year old delights in testing the friction >> threshold of the rear tire using the Klamper, a feat the Arai drum brake >> could never accomplish even with herculean effort. The Klamper/bar-end >> set-up works like a dream on long descents because it can be set and stay >> on for minutes, if necessary, just like the old Arai drum. >> >> Do you prefer to have the stoker feather the rear disc brake rather than >> have the Captain feather using the V-brakes? How do you handle this with >> communication/commands? Generally, I go with, "brake on", "more", "good", >> and "brake off". The stoker brake then is only used for drag applications, >> never feathered or for short bursts. Thus, I have no experience Captaining >> with a Stoker who has a traditional brake lever. >> >> Cheers, >> Patrick >> >> On Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at 9:49:57 PM UTC-5 Bill Lindsay wrote: >> >>> Tonight I finally got around to an upgrade that I'd been planning for a >>> long long time. I installed a hydraulic disc brake on the back of my >>> Rivendell HubbuHubbuH tandem. I'd been making do with XTR V-brakes, but >>> have had a few situations where I definitely wanted a bit more. Now I have >>> a reliable no-nonsense Shimano M447 hydro disc for the stoker to actuate. >>> Shimano hydro discs work absurdly well, are dead simple to work on, cost >>> practically nothing. It's a win win win. I also installed a stoker bell. >>> >>> One of my favorite stokers is coming back from college for the holidays, >>> so the upgrades serve as a welcome back. >>> >>> Pics prove even big bikes can enjoy their time in the stand: >>> >>> Hydro brake lever | Flickr >>> <https://www.flickr.com/photos/45758191@N04/50697176221/in/datetaken/> >>> Cheap Shimano Hydro Drag | A Shimano M447 hydro caliper give… | Flickr >>> <https://www.flickr.com/photos/45758191@N04/50697263172/in/datetaken/> >>> Stoker Bell | This mini Crane gives the stoker a friendly wa… | Flickr >>> <https://www.flickr.com/photos/45758191@N04/50697176196/in/datetaken/> >>> >>> Bill Lindsay >>> El Cerrito, CA >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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