-
-
Thats a good looking sporty...Comment
-
LOL Not really, The laws of physics are the same all over...... A tire is only so wide where it touches the pavement, once a wheel stops turning you have NO stopping power at all your just along for the ride......
What it all boils down to is getting the wheel to slow down at a maximum rate but not lock it up....... Believe me or not you can have to much stopping power on a vintage bike..... The weight of the bike and the person is a HUGE factor when your considering brakes of any kind..... Drum or disc.......Comment
-
If you ride old Harley "hard" (= modern bike slow) you can supplement the rear brake by downshifting to use compression braking. That dates from when all brakes were worthless and it does work, but weight transfer remains real.
Back when all bike, car and truck brakes were cheap trash downshifting was very necessary in the mountains. The old fucks here will remember when brake shops were plentiful in mountainous areas. Riveted brake linings came in handy!
You can't actually have too much braking power available (applied lever/pedal force is up to the rider!) but CONTROL matters to avoid sudden lockups. Precise thinking matters. An Ironhead of relatively stock dimensions like OPs is just a heavy, indifferently braked bike missing a front brake and there's nothing special at all. A large single or dual front disc is as appropriate as on any modern machine of similar weight. Simple ability to lock the wheel in a brake grab /= controlled, gradually applied force.
Very long front ends can't tolerate as much front brake without lockup due to a rearward center of gravity. That means ya don't get to stop as quickly under maximum braking but that's what ya trade for appearance. Ride accordingly and use a calendar to plan stops just like days of yore.
Peak drum brake users are the AHRMA folks and they can tune larger drums to be fairly effective, but drums didn't get shitcanned in non-vintage racing without good reason. Those of us who only ride older machines have standards from an era when there was little horsepower and not much for handling unless you bought British and they broke so often the barn finds are still coming out of the woodwork. They didn't stop well either. Even their discs had wooden feel. Contemporary riders put up with shit performance because that was accepted and bike development was dead slow with no innovation until the Japs changed the game.
Good enough because one is used to it /= similar measured results to modern systems. Ride accordingly. Choppers are art bikes, not performance machines except on a drag strip. Any doubts may be resolved by comparison testing. Old riders know this but noobs need reminding. Test, measure, know then choose accordingly.
If (rider + bike weight) on a vintage bike somehow benefits from less available braking than the same or less total weight of a modern bike/rider combo it would be nice to see measurable testable proof to that effect. All I've ever been offered in years of asking that question (not just here) is the equivalent of "it's good enough for me" which is FINE but not OBJECTIVELY measurable. Show me testable repeatable numbers. I've demo'ed many max braking exercises (rear wheel only vs. both brakes) including dirt bikes, cruisers, choppers and tourers to show students the techniques we taught work. I've worked on and owned vintage bikes (HD, Triumph, Norton Commando) for decades.
In no case does absence of a front brake result in the same or close stopping distance under maximum correctly applied braking.
Owners should take nothing for granted, especially new chop owners. Find out how much performance you can afford to throw away. That's why it's right to warn noobs so they make fewer mistakes and crash less often.Last edited by farmall; 09-03-2019, 3:12 PM.Comment
-
Originally posted by
Yep after reading this I agree........
Don't listen to anything I said about drum brakes I don't know crap....... Get all the brakes you can afford...........
But I will say I have had my brakes fade at different times on my 07 Street Glide riding with Jap bikes in the mountains.............Comment
-
Lots of very cool upgrades for Street Glide brakes are out there. Ya know ya wanna!
Donny Petersen's book is an excellent Ironhead resource.The ebook version is cheap and worth the little it costs: https://www.amazon.com/Donnys-Unauth.../dp/1532008090
If you have a PC you can rip it to .pdf using Calibre (free, open source, no adware) and read it anywhere. https://calibre-ebook.com/Comment
-
LOL Yea I know but by the time they start fading at my age I'm ready to stop playing anyways......... LOLLots of very cool upgrades for Street Glide brakes are out there. Ya know ya wanna!Comment
-
I'd rather die in the saddle than end up in a nursing home or hospice bewildered in a puddle of my own piss. (That's what drinking as a teenager was for!)
My shoulder replacement is healing nicely and when that's done the 124" goes in the FXR. Toughest old biker I've seen so far brought his pieced together Norton Commando (with Jap wheels and rectifier and all sorts of properly executed but clearly poor man's mods, medical expenses near wiped him out) to the INOA Buena Vista rally. He had nerve damage and needed help pushing and kick starting but he still rode and took it all with admirable grace. That's my fucking role model.Comment
-
Originally posted by
I didn't say I was the first to drop out....... LOL Most of the time I have to stop and wait for the kids to catch up...... LOLComment
Tweet
Comment