Brakes on Trike

[resus1uk]

My winter project is refurbishing a Higgins Ultralite trike. The frame is away for a professional repaint & brazing jobs.

The brakes are twin Mafax centrepulls.

Any experience of twin mirror SA hub brakes built into a new wheel?

My Longstaff & Pashley both have 70mm single SA hub and a Vee brake/side pull respectively.

I may have to change to flat bars if I can't run with the drops (old back injury)

[tatanab]

Any experience of twin mirror SA hub brakes built into a new wheel?

Since the frame is away being resprayed I take it you are talking about rear brakes - also I cannot imagine a double sided front hub brake although I know that racing motorcycles did that.  If rear brakes you would have to organise torque arm clamping and cable routing, the same as if you are talking about a double sided front hub.  So if the frame is being resprayed now it is a bit late to be thinking about this.

Rear brakes - unless you live somewhere very hilly and very icy then I would say don't bother.  The reason is that rear wheels are not heavily loaded and so they would lock up comparatively easily  - exactly the same reason you get wheel spin.

Front brakes - I imagine you have a Mafac centrepull (usually a Racer) and a Mafac cantilever.  Using the original Mafac levers and modern blocks I have found this to be a very powerful set up.  Note I stress the old levers bit, the pivot points are in different places in modern levers which I think makes quite a difference.  Also I say modern blocks since the old Mafac blocks are not terribly good.

So what is it you are trying to do - rear brakes or twin front?  Your post implies a double sided front. Also - modifying the existing rear hubs to accept the SA brake would be hard.

[mtrike]

I have twin rear drum brakes on the Yeti.  If this is what you mean let me know and I'll post a picture

[resus1uk]

It's twin front brakes I'm looking at.

An  H60 SA hub has been quoted with a left/right brake back-to back.

Original setup is two linked centrepulls on a brazed bar.

Nothing for rear brakes,

The original trike had an eccentric BB modified to take a screw-on six speed free wheel. So must have been a fixed in it's time.

I have no history yet

[tatanab]

An  H60 SA hub has been quoted with a left/right brake back-to back.

I imagine you have picked this up from the Roman Roads website "70mm mirror pair (L and R) of hubs with stub axles & uprated bearings, Q/R for trikes etc".
I don't believe this is what you think it is.  I read it as  a left brake and a right brake for trikes with two front wheels - the stub axle reference is a give away.

The original trike had an eccentric BB modified to take a screw-on six speed free wheel. So must have been a fixed in it's time.

Many Higgins machines had eccentric bottom brackets to allow the use of gears or fixed.  So just because there is an eccentric does not mean it has ever been used with fixed.  The eccentric needs no modification to run gears so I am not clear what you mean by the modification.

[mtrike]

It's twin front brakes I'm looking at.

An  H60 SA hub has been quoted with a left/right brake back-to back.

Original setup is two linked centrepulls on a brazed bar.

Nothing for rear brakes,

The original trike had an eccentric BB modified to take a screw-on six speed free wheel. So must have been a fixed in it's time.

I have no history yet

I have a modern sturmey hub brake on another trike but this is only single sided and paired with a caliper.  The original brake was a sturmey copy and I need to get the shoes relined as sturmey replacements don't fit.  However the combination works well and I use the drum brake as the main brake so you could try this set up, e-bay sells the brakes quite regularly.

[Zoidburg]

Get a disc mount brazed on as well as canti studs.

Simple.

[tatanab]

Another thought.  Hub brakes, be they drum or disc, are harder on fork crowns because of the moments of how the braking force is applied.  Since the last Higgins was made in about 1965 the forks are likely to be 40 years old and more, so I think I would stick with the existing arrangement.

[tatanab]

Being fascinated by this double sided idea I persevered and found this year's Sturmey catalogue. http://www.sturmey-archer.com/pdfs/Sturmey-Archer_2009-2010_Catalogue.pdf
The hub brakes are on page 27 where you can see that left and right handed variants are available.Bearing in mind that Roman Road only make trikes with two front wheels this backs up my thinking that H60 is their stock number for a pair of hubs.

[mtrike]

Notwithstanding weight distribution rear brakes bring you to a halt quicker than 2 front brakes.  I'm lucky enough to be able to compare both.  So unless you want origionality I would add disc brakes to the rear.  I intend to if I have the road trike refinished.  They also have the advantage of being able to brake mid corner without understeering off which would have avoided my recent heavy fall!

[Zipperhead]

Notwithstanding weight distribution rear brakes bring you to a halt quicker than 2 front brakes.  I'm lucky enough to be able to compare both. 

My son's Ken Rogers has it's original cantilever & centre pull brakes on the front wheel (along with original blocks). One of them is easily capable of applying enough stopping power (even with my weight on it) to lift both back wheels. Annoyingly I can't remember which brake it is, but probably the canti.

Even though there are two wheels at the back, I can't see how having brakes on both of them would be able to stop any quicker. The rear wheels would be skidding long before they were in the air, surely?

[TimO]

I presume the two brakes on the front wheels with trikes is primarily to give redundancy in case of brake failure. ie if a cable brakes, you've got a second brake to stop you going over that wall on the edge of the crevasse.

Until last year I hadn't realised that with conventional trikes it's totally legal to do it this way, and had assumed it was just pragmatism over the difficulty of fitting rear brakes.

[resus1uk]

Thanks,

Yes, Google does come up with Roman Road & their H60 paired hubs.

My trikes are all single front wheel.

So my options seem to be to:
 
keep the Mafax twin centre pulls set up
replace the Mafax  with new double pivot
braze on cantilever/vee bosses or single
build new wheel with hub brake like the other two trikes

Unless fixed wheel drive, a trike needs two brakes but OK on the same wheel.

[tatanab]

Does it really have two centrepulls?  That's a bit odd but it might lend credence to having been used as a fixed when only one front brake would be fitted.  Maybe the drive boss is a fixed one with a block fitted.  So somebody has managed to fit two centrepulls.  How did they do that?

Non fork modifying options
Chris Hewitt Cycles has  kit of parts that allows two Weinemann centrepulls to be coupled together.  I have seen a Higgins with a bolt on U plate mounted behind the fork crown that carries a cantilever, then a dual pivot or whatever in the usual position.

Fork modifying options
1.  Braze a forward facing stalk to carry a dual pivot or centrepull and braze fittings for a cantilever.
2.  Cantilever fittings fore and aft of forks.  V brake will not fit easily because the forks are too narrow to take the wider spacing that V brakes prefer.  You could do it but the arms would splay wide. 
3.  Dual pivot plus hub brake (forks need a torque arm stop plus cable guides).
The easiest and least costly is likely to be option 3 unless you want to try one of the none fork modifying options.  The most period authentic would be option 1.

[resus1uk]

The two centrepulls are linked by long bolts, probably is the Hewitt kit.

Hub brakes work well on the other two trikes so I'll explore that.

[resus1uk]

Links to flickr don't seem to work but the Higgins is on there with the Longstaff conversion

[Sigurd Mudtracker]

FWIW my Ken Rogers has a centre-mounted drum brake.  Together with the freewheel, sprockets, and differential it is a weighty piece of kit.  It didn't work particularly well with flat bars (which was what hte trike was built for), and even less so with aero drop bar levers - though the addition of a Travel Agent to increase cable pull has helped.

When or if I get round to a major restoration, the rear end gubbins will go to be replaced by a Trykit two wheel drive unit and a new pair of forks with cantis / cable disc brakes.

[drossall]

My Rogers also has a drum brake, but it's actuated by a lever for the left heel, which is mounted on an old-style fork lamp bracket brazed to the left chain stay.

[resus1uk]

Update on the braking side of this project:

70mm SA front hub brake built with a rim suitable for caliper brake by Spa Cycles.

Fitted to front forks & linked to Avid ATB levers on a staright handlebar.

Nearly new Tectro double pivot longdrop caliper salvaged from my old Claude Butler Vuelto when its frame became terminal.

Dual linked Weinmanns removed to reveal just a standard single hole fitting in the forks for the caliper.

Frame had old rack brackets removed & two pairs of bottle mounts added.
Cable guides brazed on around the bottom tube and downtube bosses brazed to replace the bolt-on type. Claude again the donor for the shifters .

Frame was resprayed in Crimson enamel by Bob Jackson.

Gears sorted out, Clipless pedals on & accessories fitted.

Eventaully found the frame number under layers of paint & clag, so now know its 1953 vintage but not how it came to Bradford from Surrey.

Overall the trike is much lighter than my Longstaff , just need a lighter rider to complete the project. (