Rear Brake Collapse

[Andy Z]

In view of the above incident, I would advise the owner of the 20DC cafe racer special seen at Battlesbridge on Sunday to seriously look to replace the rear brake torque arm with a standard steel one that has not been drilled for lightness. Looking at the pic it may be an alloy one & the large holes dont leave much meat in the metal. A locked up rear brake as djbgreeves has found out is not fun

With that lovely twin-sided front brake, I don't expect you'd need to use the rear much anyway!

[merlin]

Thin skin comes to mind. Best Regards as always Merlin

[Gr11mpy]

Think Sprocket should post photo's of the front brake torque arms (which I loved) and really spark a debate.......
Awesome shiney special, liked it, a lot. inspirational.

[John Pattinson]

Rear brake arm

What is the point of doubling the thickness so you can drill some dirty big holes in the tourqe arm. I wouldn't be surprised if it is heavier than standard! I know it's for show but not my thing personally. Keep up the comments JW!!! Signed Mr A Stirrer.

[Andy Z]

inspirational.

Absolutely!

Although I was a tad puzzled at the way the handlebars grips were fitted.....

[mick morris]

speedo drive?

Is the speedo drive gear inside intact, My 24DB has paddle hubs and that also had rear brake failure. damaged components were a sheared drive shaft for the speedo gear box, damaged teeth on the drive gear in the hub, a mangled brake shoe spring and a brake shoe with with one lug where the spring fits through snapped off.

I can't decide whether the speedo gearbox shaft snapped first leaving the cog floating around loose in the brake or the shoe spring came adrift, either way there was a lot of damage very much akin to this problem, a steel backplate would obviously be tougher than alloy so no damage there.

[djbgreeves]

Hopefully I've fixed it

My thanks to all those who offered help and advice especially to John for putting me in touch with Paul "trials" Powell of CottonVilliers Spares who supplied a back plate and several other parts I needed, (the speedo drive survived the event). It took some fiddling about to get it sorted - all part of the fun - but I couldn't spot anything that might have caused it other than the shattered parts had quite a lot of dull sections on the fractures, suggesting it may well have been cracking up over time. I'll certainly be checking the hubs closely in future - it was pure luck it didn't result in a prang.

It's MOT ran out whilst I was working on it; "fingers crossed" it will get a clean bill of health and be back running around next week.

[djbgreeves]

MOT passed

MOT passed & all working as it should.

[John Wakefield]

Front brake too

It was interesting to read Mike Jackson's letter in LL (Oct 2016) in which he mentions problems with not only rear but front British Hub alloy brake plate failures. Mike said he was surprised not to see any mention of the problem in print, well he obviously does not read this forum.
It would appear that the brake plates were stiffened up in early 1962 so in theory only the earlier ones should fail. This was not the case though with the East Coaster mention in the early posts in this thread, as that was manufactured in 1965 So what are the visual differences between the early & post 62 brake plates?