Forum

[Jamesy]

After fitting new brake shoes,springs,brake cable and adjusting as per drilled out trunion mod.I took the bike a run and the front braking was bad as ever.Disapointed in the sense that the hosts write up declared after the trunion mod the braking should be as good as a modern bike.However the back brake is excellent and with 50/50 braking it's passable.Am I expecting too much?

[Revband]

No but you may have done something wrong or the new linings may need to bed in?.

[Jamesy]

I am confident the set up is right it ain't rocket science.I have had that front wheel off more times that all the bikes I have had in the last 41 years.It would need to improve 500% after bedding in.I will remain optimistic main time.

[Adrian]

Forgive me if you have already done this, but you do need to take extra care when you adjust the TLS brake in that both shoes contact the drum at exactly the same time. Can be fiddly for those of us with only two hands, but it has to be done. If you can pull the lever with the brake cable on hard and lock it in position somehow, then you can hold the short lever hard against the drum and take up the slack in the linkage. Make sure that both levers are set on their cams at the same respective angles to keep a parallelogram between the levers and the threaded link rod. Ideally the cable and the lever into which it hooks are at a 90° angle with the brake full-on.



One way of getting better brakes is to have oversize linings fitted to the shoes and get them turned down to fit the drum.



I know Tim for NZ regularly blasts out hosts' mod when people say they've done it, but you've done it now! (Did this myself yesterday too...)

Otherwise start pricing up the parts for a disk brake conversion!



A.

[Revband]

Your correct, it ain't rocket science, a correctly set up twin leader is quite capable of locking the wheel.

[stinkwheel]

I found that leaving the "domed" nut on the brake plate slde of the spindle slightly looser than you'd expect made a difference, effectively allowing the brake to find its own centre.

[Super45]

Cant lock the front wheel on my 2000 350 ( no trunion mod) but id class is as half decent now the shoes have bedded in enough so may look at tweaking it more to give a better bite to see if I can get it to lock then just wind it back a tad

rear one easily locks the wheel though