A Hydraulic Disc Brake Rivendell...

[Bill Lindsay]

Tonight I finally got around to an upgrade that I'd been planning for a long long time.  I installed a hydraulic disc brake on the back of my Rivendell HubbuHubbuH tandem.  I'd been making do with XTR V-brakes, but have had a few situations where I definitely wanted a bit more.  Now I have a reliable no-nonsense Shimano M447 hydro disc for the stoker to actuate.  Shimano hydro discs work absurdly well, are dead simple to work on, cost practically nothing.  It's a win win win.  I also installed a stoker bell.  

One of my favorite stokers is coming back from college for the holidays, so the upgrades serve as a welcome back.  

Pics prove even big bikes can enjoy their time in the stand:

Hydro brake lever | Flickr 

Cheap Shimano Hydro Drag | A Shimano M447 hydro caliper give… | Flickr 

Stoker Bell | This mini Crane gives the stoker a friendly wa… | Flickr

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA 

[rlti...@gmail.com]

Nice! I have a cable actuated BB7 on mine connected to a thumb shifter lever. It works pretty well but the thumb shifter I used isn’t the best. I think the ratchets they put in it are coarse enough that is doesn’t always hold as tight as we want. A hydro with a real brake lever would work better.

Robert Tilley

San Diego, CA

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 8, 2020, at 6:50 PM, Bill Lindsay <tape...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tonight I finally got around to an upgrade that I'd been planning for a long long time.  I installed a hydraulic disc brake on the back of my Rivendell HubbuHubbuH tandem.  I'd been making do with XTR V-brakes, but have had a few situations where I definitely wanted a bit more.  Now I have a reliable no-nonsense Shimano M447 hydro disc for the stoker to actuate.  Shimano hydro discs work absurdly well, are dead simple to work on, cost practically nothing.  It's a win win win.  I also installed a stoker bell.  

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[Patrick Cronin]

Bill,

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how that hydraulic lever/caliper works as a tandem brake compared to a drag brake set up. My HHH has a Paul Klamper linked to a DuraAce bar-end shifter on the stoker's bosco end. The captain's controls are XTR V-brakes like yours. My stokers are used to actuating an Arai drum brake with a friction shifter, so my thinking was that setting up the HHH with a drag function, rather than with a traditional lever, would be most similar. In practice, that has held only somewhat true because the efficiency of the Klamper is exponentially greater than a drum; my 4-year old delights in testing the friction threshold of the rear tire using the Klamper, a feat the Arai drum brake could never accomplish even with herculean effort. The Klamper/bar-end set-up works like a dream on long descents because it can be set and stay on for minutes, if necessary, just like the old Arai drum.

Do you prefer to have the stoker feather the rear disc brake rather than have the Captain feather using the V-brakes? How do you handle this with communication/commands? Generally, I go with, "brake on", "more", "good", and "brake off". The stoker brake then is only used for drag applications, never feathered or for short bursts. Thus, I have no experience Captaining with a Stoker who has a traditional brake lever.

Cheers,

Patrick

[tuolumne bikes]

I switched mine so the (cable) disc is the main brake. If 650B rim brake rims are going to go extinct, I don't see any point in wearing one out, and the back of a tandem takes a lot of the braking load. I think you could replace lots of discs and pads for the price of rebuilding the wheel. The stoker has an XC thumbshifter controlling the v-brake which works better than you might think for a drag brake and works great as a parking brake. She almost never uses the drag brake. We haven't had problems with overheating the disc brake even with touring loads.

I'm not big on disc brakes since rim brakes are so simple and meet my needs. But I won't be building wheels for loaded tandem touring myself so the replacement cost for wearing out the rim is significant.

Carl

[Bill Lindsay]

Patrick Cronin said: " I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how that hydraulic lever/caliper works as a tandem brake compared to a drag brake set up.  "

My thoughts are that those are all valid brake configurations.  Choose the brake configuration you want to choose.  Try to be happy with the one you have chosen.  If you fail to be happy with the one you have chosen, try something else.  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA 

On Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 7:55:11 AM UTC-8 Patrick Cronin wrote:

[Bill Lindsay]

Patrick Cronin went on to ask:  " Do you prefer to have the stoker feather the rear disc brake rather than have the Captain feather using the V-brakes? How do you handle this with communication/commands? "

There is no protocol in place yet, because I haven't ridden the bike in this configuration with a stoker.  I just put the disc brake on last night.  I have 5 stokers in mind:

Stoker #1 is nervous about cycling in general and likes control.  Having a brake present will calm their nervousness

Stoker #2 is nervous about cycling and does not like to go too fast.  Having a brake will enable them to control speed without nagging the captain to slow down

Stoker #3 is pretty calm and trusting, and follows instructions extremely well.  They are also my heaviest stoker and the one about whom I'm most concerned regarding sufficient braking power on a steep descent

Stoker #4 is trusting and follows instructions like #3 but is far lighter.  They are also my most likely camping partner, so we may have a heavy S24O load

Stoker #5 is an expert mountain bike racer.  They have an excellent instinct for scrubbing speed and following the briefest of instructions

It sounds like you have a system in place that works for you, which is very good.  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

On Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 7:55:11 AM UTC-8 Patrick Cronin wrote:

[Mike Godwin]

Bill

Is the disc brake cable actuated hydraulic piston/brake or is it full hydraulic?  

Mike SLO CA

[Bill Lindsay]

Mike in SLO asked if my stoker rear brake is full hydro.

It is a full hydro Shimano model.  I don't think Shimano makes a cable/hydro hybrid brake.  I don't know if Shimano makes a cable actuated disc either. 

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA 

[bingomck]

Bill, great bike! Tandem Riv with discs makes sense. 

[Bill Lindsay]

Carl at Tuolomne Bikes indicated his rear disc is a captain brake and his stoker gets to operate the rear rim brake.  He says one of the reasons is to delay the wearing out of the sidewalls of the rear rim.  

I'm not super worried by the rim-wear part of it, but I think that would be a swank setup and it may be the move.  I'm one of those who believes hydraulic actuation is flat out superior to cable actuation, and in my book if you are going to bother to run disc brakes, it's kind of obvious to me that the desirable move is hydraulics.  I think the longer a cable run goes, the worse the brakes feel in your hands.  Cable actuated front brakes feel fantastic, perfect, in the hand.  Rear brakes on a single bike, a good mechanic can set them up to feel pretty OK, acceptable, and all that.  A cable actuated rear tandem brake should be the worst feeling brake in the stable.  Hydraulic actuation is the perfect solution to a really long housing run, I think.  The captain's right hand will feel as connected to the rear brake as their left is connected to the front.  The stoker will have a nice short cable run for the rear rim brake.  So, in summary this switch would put the captain in control of much "more" braking, would radically improve the hand feel of the captain rear brake, and would give the stoker a very solid auxiliary brake to use only as needed, relegating any rear rim-heating and rim-wear to extreme situations.  With a normal brake lever the stoker can use more of a 'pump' method than a 'drag' method so as to manage rim-heat build up.  I love that idea.  It's another win-win-win.  

I've reminded myself that the HubbuHubbuH does in fact have hydro-tubing guides all the way up to the captain.  I just need to check my roll of hydro-tubing to make sure I have enough.  Swapping the brake levers between captain and stoker would be a ~1 hour job.  When my guest-stoker comes over we may take it out one day, then do the swap and take it out again the next, and see what we think.  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

[CB]

Well considered as usual Bill. Another advantage of the hydraulic setup is not needing to order a tandem brake cable and hope it will make it all the way to the caliper. The cable works fine for me, but probably because I don't have a hydraulic setup to compare it to. Ignorance is bliss.

I've thought about a v-brake lever for my wife. She used to use the brake when she was uncomfortable with my speed, but she's gotten more comfortable with the way I drive and rarely used the brake.

There have been a few times the stoker v-brake has been handy for scrubbing speed, and a v-brake lever would be better for that. The Suntour thumbie has fine clicks and wraps cable gradually (high mechanical advantage), so it's not a touchy "gonna lockup the wheel" situation. But the kicker is that we've ridden the bike loaded as much as not. Even with a kickstand, the loaded bike is a beast to balance and locking the wheel to park is a huge help. The thumbie is the best for setting the parking brake.

Another advantage of the stoker v-brake lever is that it defaults to off, so there's no "Are you sure the brake is off?" question on the loaded tandem.
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Carl