Wet Weather Braking (or not)
One of the things about living on the East side of the country is that we’re in the rain shadow of the Pennines. Over the other side is the Lake District - lots of lakes made by lots of rain filling up the valleys. But over here, it hardly ever rains.
When it does, however, you need to pay attention when you’re riding. I’ve fallen off five times in the last five years, and two of those have been due to trying to corner too fast on wet roads. So now when it rains, I ride like I’m walking on eggshells, on tip-toes, wearing ballet pumps.
There’s another problem of course - brakes can behave very oddly when they get wet. Our tandem, Daisy, has her original steel-rimmed wheel on the front. When you try to brake in the wet, I swear that the bike actually speeds up .
Modern alloy rims tend to perform better - especially if they have a machined surface, but even they suffer from poor wet weather performance. Typically the stopping distance is at least doubled. Scotland’s Magnatom demonstrates this as part of his on-going record of life as a cyclist on Britain’s roads:
Hub brakes (like those on Siegfried and Daisy’s rear wheel) don’t suffer from this problem. True, they’re not as effective as rim brakes in the dry, but they perform just as well in a downpour, so you don’t need to adjust your riding to compensate.
As for disk brakes? I’ve no experience of them! I’m probably prejudiced against them in fact - I look at them on bikes, and think to myself, "Don’t know how they work", and so shy away . . . If you have experience of disk brakes in the wet though, please do let us know how they perform. Just leave a comment:
I have hydraulic disc brakes on my Bike Friday Tikit. They stop me powerfully and silently in the wet or the dry. I got them because living in Sheffield the combination of steep hills, rain and small wheels saw me wear through a rear rim in less than a year, see: http://www.combingmyhair.com/?p=18
I am a great fan of disc brakes, but they do put greater stresses on the frame, sometimes to negative effect, see: http://www.combingmyhair.com/?p=337
Gareth
Alloy rims don’t just “tend to perform better”, they’re absolutely at least an order of magnitude better than steel, which you couldn’t pay me to use on any bike I actually ride in weather, especially on the front wheel (which does all the stopping). With good all weather pads (Kool-Stop salmon compound) and good brakes and a light squeeze once in a while to dry your rims, I find rim brakes are still adequate in the rain and tire traction is the limiting factor.
Agree with Gareth. If you’re going to go with hub brakes, get disks, they actually work.
Dinsdale - how do you retrofit disk brakes to an existing frame?
The hub brakes I have tried - Shimano Nexus something - were just as good in the wet as in the dry, but compared to just about any of my rim brakes they felt like wet weather braking ALL the time. I guess consistency has some value but I really prefer being able to pull a front-wheel wheelie just once in a while.
Disk brakes (hydraulic) are wonderful though. In my experience they get somewhat worse in the wet, but still miles better than hub or rim brake. And there is just so much control and modulation in them.
They have their limits though, as I found out going down 3500 feet down an off road path on a mountain in northern Italy. My front disc brake started smelling burnt, and the lever went more and more soggy until I could pull it all the way to the handlebar without any proper braking effect. I guess the brake fluid started boiling and creating air bubbles.
If bikes didn’t get stolen in the blink of an eye here, I would have big fat discs on my all-year commuter bike which sees quite a bit of rain. I think we’ve had 23 days with rain so far this November.
Oh, regarding discs in the wet - they tend to take a one or a few rotations under braking before the water has been shed from the disc, and then they start braking properly. So you get a slight delay in the braking effect - but I guess that goes for rim brakes as well.
Under prolonged or repeated braking, they get very hot though - you can see the steel changing color to purple-blueish shades - so perhaps that will cause some of the water to evaporate. Not sure if it matters as I only tried hard braking in dry weather.
Hi Karl,
The back wheel hub brake on my friends Pashley Princess Sov. won’t fully lock any more. Have you experienced this on Seigfried ? I can only think that some oil must have got into the hub…
Hi Karl,
The back wheel hub brake on my friends Pashley Princess Sov. won’t fully lock any more. Have you experienced this on Seigfried ? I can only think that some oil must have got into the hub…
I’d be astonished if she’d got oil in there - unless the bike’s been completely submerged in WD40 as part of a pre-winter waterproofing exercise.
Your friend’s brakes probably just need adjusting - either undo the screw where the cable comes out of the brake lever, or else there’s a similar arrangement down where the brake cable sheath ends at the hub. You want to set it up so that the brakes are just starting to rub (test it by spinning the wheel when it’s off the ground), and then back off the adjustment so that the wheel runs free. Whichever end of the cable you make the adjustment, remember to screw the locking ring in place so it doesn’t come undone again!
Oi! Stop spreading my embarrassment!