What Kind of Brakes Velomobiles Usually Have?
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2021
- In this video I explain my opinion about why velomobiles usually have drum brakes instead of disk brakes.
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#saukki #velomobile #brakes - Sport
And they’re quite powerful enough - if you can lock your wheels then more powerful brakes can’t help.
The problem with Sturmey Archer drum brakes, as seen here, is that it's a leading/trailing shoe design. The primary shoe wears first and the mechanism can't compensate for that. A good drum brake is either hydraulically actuated so it can continue to apply pressure to the worn shoe that doesn't make contact, or a twin leading shoe brake, neither of which are common for a bicycle.
Shimano's roller brakes are a better alternative, if only they worked and didn't have their trademarked "power modulator" in each front hub to make sure the performance is severely handicapped.
I have velomobile with front disc brakes. Maintenance with open wheel wells is not very difficult, brake pad wear is not also very awful but disc brakes need more maintenance compared to drum brakes. Wheel removal is harder because you have to remove brake caliper first. But parts availability of disc brakes are much better compared to Sturmey Archer drum brake parts which are not available in local bike shops. On the other hand in my experience with drum brake velomobile main issue was not brakes themselves but freezing Bowden cables in winter. Hydraulic brakes circumvent these kind of problems but right now there is no hydraulic bike drum brakes in mass production.
I’ve been pondering how to convert drum to hydraulics - the brake line run on a velo does look a little convoluted
From what I've seen, there's more trikes with discs than drums. Drums (brake shoes) last a shitload longer as they have at least 4 times the surface area than disc pads. I've done 350 km on my new GS Magnum big wheel and the brake shoes still haven't fully bedded in yet. Discs would already have needed adjustment by now. A bonus for me is I have quick detach front wheels so it's so easy to inspect brake wear and clean the drums of dust in just moments.
Sturmey Archer drum brakes usually last 40-50,000 miles before the shoes are worn out.
All they need is cleaning and deglazing and I do mine once a year.
Whereas the disc brakes on my other trike only last around 2-3,000 miles and need adjusting every 2-300 miles, plus they need cleaning/servicing 2-3 times a year with the milage I do 4-5,000 miles per year.
I can lock the wheels on the drum brakes but they are very progressive in nature whereas the disc brakes are not so forgiving.
Australian Pedal Prix is almost all disk brakes now, and all the top trikes use disks. So it can definitely be done, even in a 20kg racing velomobile. Maybe see if Trisled will ship you an Acquila to play with? Second hand racing trikes can be pretty affordable, and some of them have been packed up nice and small so shipping wouldn't be too expensive... unpacking would be the chalklenge.
In mountains like the Cascades or Rockies, you need something like a droge chute, to help with braking, with drum brakes. Catrikes have used single hung disc brakes, for around 15 years or so. Here in the Northwest of the US, rain and snow are the norm, and I haven't had the issues, that keep getting mentioned. That is probably due more to riding style, than anything else though. I don't use my brakes much, as they just slow me down. I think with velomobiles, you would need the 220 mm, rather than the 160 mm rotors, too get anything like an efficient system.
Also a normal bicycle has one front wheel and velomobiles have two. and we all know that braking on the front wheel brakes faster than the back wheel. So if i ride 40km and i do an emergancy brake with my 90mm drum brakes i only need a few meters to stop. So the upgrade to disc brakes is not worht the cost and the trouble it brings to clean the brake everytime you ride your velomobile.
My experience as bike mechanic is that even regular bikes with enough things mouted to frame can make disc brake adjustment tricky so I think the main reason for not using disc brakes is the difficulty of maintenance. If I remember correctly WAV had an option to get it with disc brakes or maybe it was some other make, but I do remembre seeing some model listing it as an option.
Hubs are readily available as trikes almost always come with disc brakes and even Cannondale uses/used lefty front forks with singleside mounting, but brake levers for hyraulic brakes could be a problem as they are quite modified for velomobile tillers.
Hi Saukki!!! Thanks for these review and analisys!
Have good drives.
Forza.
😉👍👌
What if you had regen braking on an electrically assisted velomobile... That would help alleviate stress on the brakes during descents! (more weight to carry around though).
@Saukki - The Velomobile Channel
Have you ever considered Rohloff hub or Pinion? Being enclosed at Velo, it has to be real pain, being stucked at wrong gear...
i where thinking about a pinion in my velomobile but i dont have the money for that xD so now i have a nuvinci n330 in my velo and i think it cycles nicer because i am always in the right gear. but i feel that driving away is slower now.
Toxy ZR has a one sided wheel at the back with disk break. It is attached similar to a velomobile front wheel. With open wheel wells this can work, but one issue not mentioned in the video is hydraulic vs. mechanical. I don't like mechanical disk breaks at all, and if you use tiller steering in a velo, hydraulic will be kind of complex, and almost impossible to adjust for having same breaking force on both side with one break lever.
Wish I'd known this before I went through the trouble of fitting disc brakes to my bicycle trailer.
I have had my experiences with all kind of brakes, and you have to adjust almost all of them in some way. They all have their advantages and handicaps, you should simply take that into account whilst considering the usage.
For instance, overheating of the drum brakes can lead to jamming of the wheal - nothing for hilly or mountainous terrain, as you've mentioned it. In one instance, there was even a burn injury.
Rim brakes may quit their function even on clean but wet streets, or in freezing conditions - something you don't tolerate in the tight and crowded cities, where sudden hazards might force you to react quickly. Furthermore, you have to keep your eye on that rim - it wears out as well and gets weaker. I've seen few cases when the rim broke because of its wear.
Disc brakes can be expensive, but aren't always that. In some cases, when compared to the rim brakes, if you consider not only the brake shoe but the rim wear as well.
Any way, thank you for the video. Your point of size as a main reason for drum brakes on velomobiles had never been appeared to me.
I like the "abs" feel of the drum brakes, not yet had problems with braking power. There are disc brakes on my two bicycles and sometimes I think that especially the front brake operates a bit too promptly. Too much is just too much, even with brakes
You could use a smaller brake rotor or weaker brake caliper
Well, pretty much yes, they are (drum brakes) more compact for limited space at velomobile, but also, you can get left and right drumbrake! I have discbrakes on my trike and they brake pretty well, BUT, especially when wet, you can feel that one that is mounted backwards (as they are NOT other then left versions from regular bikes) has less of moderation and locks up sooner - very inconvinient when you have them joined together as Saukki has. I still didn't manage to find calipers that has piston in the center of pads, common solution is to have more of overhanging pad on the side where rotor is runnin IN, which makes them uneven when one is running backwards.
Also, I can't suggest to mount discbrakes into your velo - discbrakes produce a LOT of terrible black dust that sticks to everything and is very difficult to wash - you will contaminate your inner space quickly.
on the other hand, having rear brake is very nice on long-ish downhills, as rear brake can't do much when rapid stop is necessary, but is fine as a dumper, slowing you down or just keeping your speed in check. when you kill rear brake with heat way less is lost, compare to killing front.
I'd love to have drumbrakes, but it wasn't an option so I have to live with what I have. Once Sturmey produce hydraulic drumbrakes, I will DIY some conversion immediatelly :-)
Can you explain the physics of why the difference in caliper location causes one brake to be stronger than the other? How do you ensure you are putting the same amount of pressure on the brake levers, if you have a single lever how are sure the two cables have exactly the same pressure at the pads? I have a trike with a similar disc layout and notice no difference when they are adjusted correctly.
@@lexstockton2451 well, I have front brakes hydraulic, which solves issue with balancing cables - you don't need to set anything, liquids spread pressure perfectly evenly by basic physic. Therefore one brake lever spreads pressure perfectly evenly on both calipers. But that is kinda thing: you spread pressure evenly, when there is anything else different, you can't compensate (differnt friction on pad/rotor surface, different traction under tire and so on) thus wheels CAN brake unevenly. Standard (most common) solution for trikes is to have left and right brake, so rider can compensate for whatever is uneven.
So far, all calipers I saw were uneven by design, designed to take advantage of rotor coming into them from certain direction, as it is usual on common bikes.
Pads are "sucked in" (to each other) by rotor on incoming side and "pushed out" (apart) on outcoming side. That is given by leverage and friction and play between each parts and so on. Take it as a fact for now, but I will make a vid about it I think :-) As you don't want to wear outyour pads unevenly, manufacturers fight back by misaligning pads. From center of the piston, pad is longer on incoming side and shorter on outcoming side, at least on all brakes I got so far.
That means that you have one rotor, that takes advantage of direction of rotation and one that is in disadvantage of the same thing - because you have SAME caliper for both sides, but one has to be mounted on left side of the wheel (which is usual) and one on the right side of the wheel (which is backward).
@@tri-seeker2753 Let’s start with the pad design, yup, both my experience and my basic understanding of disc brakes says the brakes will give uneven braking if the relationship between the pad and the piston is different. And agree that a single lever hydraulic eliminates what I’ve seen so many people do, blame the idea when the execution and or maintenance is the problem.
I guess this comes down to values, no I will not run a drag brake to slow me down, it I wanted to go slower there are many cheaper, easier options. If you are willing to risk brake failure on a long downhill because you haven’t found a pad that doesn’t dump that acidic gunk (sorry to be so technical) that some pads give off we just have a difference in our values. I live in an area with a lot of elevation changes, some of them pretty steep. If I lived in, say, Dallas brakes wouldn’t be a major issue. All I see is some pretty simple engineering issues that the velomobile industry seems to be dealing with by putting their heads in the sand. Until they bring their brakes out of the 1950s I’ll stay on the outside and keep my money. BTW, kind of a different thing but the folks at Podbike don’t seem to have any problem putting discs on a velomobile, not to mention much more sophisticated suspension, and Leitra seems to have been building velos with discs for 20 or 30 years. It hardly seems like an insurmountable technical challenge. Probably just a side effect of living in litigious America but I am still waiting for somebody to lose everything because a velo’s brakes failed, the rider couldn’t stop and the rider died as a result. Juries tend to be harsh in cases like that.
@@lexstockton2451 for a velomobiles, drumbrakes are pretty fine i think. even discbrake could be heated up so it stops working and being enclosed at wheelarch anyway, I am not sure if cooling would be better anyway. so far, they have these brakes with L/R solution and with advantage of compactness, as the drum is in the hub, disc rotor just takes more space.
Obviously you have to design for the area you are going to ride at, but claiming drumbrakes as deathtrap is unfair at least. They are still used even on full sized cars for a gods sake!
I ride in relatively hilly area too and so far, I found that having rear brake to take all the heat and save fronts for serious braking works just fine for me. Having a chance, I'd take drums rather then discs, but construction of my machine doesn't allow that, also as I mentioned, drumbrakes are (so far) mechanical only and I don't have a workshop to DIY hydraulic solution for them...
@@tri-seeker2753 We’ll just have to agree we disagree. Request, please list the full sized, or small, cars with front drum brakes, I haven’t seen one in years. The last I recall owning was a 1966 Mustang I-6.
When using mudguards with disc brakes on any bicycle, you need brake shades(roof like things above brakes). It keeps the mud, sand and water that fall down from mudguards, away from brakes and so the brakes stay quieter and probably last longer too. But as they aren't available anywhere commercially(or at least I don't know anyone manufacturing them) u need to make them by yourself.
Wtf are you talking about? used my boardman urb 8.9 daily for last three years, didnt touch the brakes in that period (no bleeding either) looking at new pads now but stopping power is still very much there. Brake shades gtfo.
discos conseguem dissipar calor melhor que freios a tambor. para melhorar mais, basta utilizar discos de maior diâmetro
En oiken tuohon kestävyyteen juurikaan tahdo uskoa. Itselläni Surron X sähkömopossa käytössä polkupyörän jarrut jolla olen ajanut radalla kisaa. Surron X myös painaa noin 60-65kg joten painoa myös merkittävästi enemmän kuin normaalilla pyörällä. Ja ne on kestäny todella hyvin. Talvella piti vaihtaa 3000km välein ja kesällä olen ajanut nyt 4000km eikä vielä ole tarvetta palojen vaihdolle.
Ajoin Questillä 35000 km kaikenlaisissa olosuhteissa, eikä ollut vielä merkkiäkään jarrujen kulumisesta,kun myin sen. Eli pysyn kannassani, rumpujarrujen palat kestää huomattavasti pidempään, kuin levyjarrujen palat.
I have disk breaks on my Leitra ;-)
An old good velomobile but with up to date technology.
Or use Fred Flintstone braking.
Has anyone made a serious attempt at air brakes (like dive bombers)? Inductive braking like on funfair drop rides might be interesting in long steep descents.
Some people have been experimenting with brake parachutes on mountaneous areas. I of course can’t test it, because we don’t have that kind of hills anywhere near here where I live 😄
Disk brakes = better modulability, more braking power, less overheat.
I don't like drum brakes because they tend to ovalize and braking becomes irregular.
Honestly they couod have put disc brakes in there. I know i brought this up on the velomobile page and it was quite the controversial topic. A lot of people claimed that drums performed better with less air flow in the enclosed wheel well and that disc brakes would over heat. I think disc brakes would heat up faster because theres less material to disapate the heat. Also in wet conditions theres no denying that disc brakes work better than drum. And being that the water gets trapped in the wheel well makes the discs all the more important. I am assuming the disc brakes are not water tight so they will get wet. Personally i am afraid to go down any steep hill with turns because the brakes will not stop me and will most likely cause a roll over. Plus the climbing gear in the velos is not good enough for the extra weight of course you can always buy a differemt sized chain ring to fix this. But as far as the drum brakes performance ni do agree disc brakes need to have their pads replaced more often. But thats because the contact patch is a lot smaller than drum brakes. For high speed applications disc brakes really need to be used especially to be able to slow down at corners. The replacement would be the same as replacing the drum brakes but with 2 extra bolts. For the caliper mounting bracket. But where to mount the bracket at idk. Thats probably why they chose drum brakes was for simplicity.
Hi Saukki, Josef Janning did a video recently (czcams.com/video/NLKigJUuooQ/video.html) on Gary Solomon's channel, discussing velomobile wheels, where he talked about a brand of heat dissipating drum brakes. I think the company he was referring to is a German firm named Ginkgo. It seems they make wheelsets and the special drum brakes they use are still made by Sturmey-Archer. Are the heat dissipating drum brakes shown in your video also from Sturmey-Archer? Thanks!
Drum brakes= Less maintenance, longer lasting and plenty powerful enough.
Disc brakes would overheat without the airflow cooling them and the Disc's are prone to warping when they overheat in addition to faster wear and higher maintenance.
I don't use them, only for parking and remain stopped at crossings or traffic lights or emergency braking. Regenerative braking, yeah...
Regen is absolutely amazing. Zero maintenance, unaffected by environment and you don't have to squeeze the levers hard. Magical.
Then your brake pads should literally last forever 😂
@@TheVelomobileChannel Same pads and disks over 20k km. Changed bikes before I changed pads.
Putting harder compound pads will increase the performance of disc brakes. I think you are explaining your own biases, not showing experience in this video.
Disk brakes are stupid think. Funny, rim brakes are disk brakes in funtamental and only weak point versus small disk is rim damages or tire over heating.
loss off braking with water is a draw back too. Rim brakes on a single sided wheel will need a stiff mounting beam for the caliper too.
I’m one potential customer who ended his plan to buy a velomobile because of the piss poor brake and suspension design. Maybe tiny drums work in Finland, where I live we have long 10% (and more) downhills. I wouldn’t try that is a machine as heavy and low drag as a Velo. Thousands of trikes, like mine, are build with disc brakes but somehow putting a body on the trike (making it heavier and reducing air drag) means you use tiny, weak brakes. I want better brakes, not tiny antiques. The solution to all the problems you name is called engineering, problems can be solved once you admit you have a problem. I lived (barely) through disc brakes coming to motorcycling, I’m not going through that again.
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What if you are malnourished?