Hitchcocks Forum

Indian Bullet, front twin leading shoe. Front wheel . What would happen if the wheel is rotated in the wrong direction (from normal bullet mounting) ? Do we still get a normal twin leading shoe action, or something else ?.
A little background, A friend of mine has a Greeves motorcycle, and as he is getting on, decided that an “electric leg”, would be very useful. And so fitted a 200cc Honda engine, with a starter fitted. ( it looks a very neat job) Now he has other Jap bikes, with far better brakes, than the Greeves (single leading shoe) So decided to fit an Enfield front wheel, as it had twin leading shoe. We had spoken on the phone a few times while he was doing the conversion. But on seeing the bike for the first time, I was taken aback to see the wheel fitted the wrong way round, his comment was no its not, its on the correct side, (as the greeves). A discussion took place as to will it still work correctly, result “one all”. Your comments please
MRG

Well, it seems to me it's the same as using the twin leading shoe brake when rolling your bike backwards. In other words, it becomes a twin trailing shoe brake.

Just to make sure I understand correctly, we are talking about a single-sided front brake, with two actuating levers connected by an adjustable rod?

Yes, a standard bullet twin leading shoe, front wheel, turning the wrong way round
MRG

OK, well unless I'm missing something incredibly obvious, it's now a twin trailing shoe brake.

Mine holds on hills, unlike the rear brake. I don`t know for sure. Take it for a blast to a tee intersection stop sign, it could only end up in someones house.

Probably not good engineering practice because you don't know for sure what forces come into play here but with a 200cc motor in a Greaves frame it is not going to be a high speed machine with massive weight to pull up

Twin trailing-shoe = useless. Did your friend's original r.h. brake also have a fully-floating brakeplate (assuming it has Greeves leading-link forks) ?

I used to have a 250 Greeves. ( My First Motorcycle.) Villiers used to produce electric start engines at the time, a 350 twin. They still do produce a 15bhp electric start engine.

If your friend tries applying the brakes while wheeling the bike backwards, then tries again wheeling it forwards, he will appreciate his mistake.



He might be better off with a Honda(?) TLS front wheel from the early 70's which has a torque arm mounting, that can be set up to float with the leading link forks. Mind you, I think they have the brake on the left too, so if your friend doesn't get it this time, this may not help!

I have a Triumph with a twin leading shoe brake this brake is capable of locking the front wheel, last year whilst out with friends I was leading and arrived at a turn off into a side road the side road was uphill and I arrived there alone I stopped about 20 foot up the hill to wait, the front brake lever came right back to the bars and I rolled backwards to the bottom of the hill, that is how much use a twin leader is when the wrong way round.