- Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:19 am
#69159
Most British bikes (of which the Enfield was one) had this method of centralizing the brake shoes, apply the brake hard with the fulcrum loosened, this centralizes the shoes in all directions hold the brake on and lock the fulcrum in position the brake shoes now contact the drum equally, if the shoes are not centralized in this way either the leading shoe or the trailing shoe will be doing all the work, it it's the leading shoe the brake will grab, if it's the trailing shoe the brake will be very poor.
Triumph and Royal Enfield had their own system, Triumph on some model had fully floating shoes which would self centre and act in a similar way to a twin leading shoe, but the prevent servo action locking the brake on the liners only ran to around the back two thirds of the shoe, putting the shoes in the wrong way resulted in the wheel locking.
The Royal Enfield system allowed the actual cam mount to centralize which again lets the shoes float but to a lesser degree than Triumph, the rear brake originally was allowed to float, hence the lock nuts and the bolts from the inside however it was soon found the the average Joe public was unable to adjust the correct amount of slack and this caused problems so the advice changed and it was now to have the bolts just under tightened assemble the brake apply it hard, dismantle it again and fully tighten the bolts and fit the lock nuts, however the dealers of the time still set them up to allow the cam bush to self centre as they knew how to do it correctly.
a correctly adjusted Enfield rear brake should be quite capable of skidding the rear wheel if applied hard.
