Bowden linked servo brakes - 1926 style
Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2022 11:23 pm
I was gifted some old bike magazines recently. some of them going back to the '20s and '30s ('old' stuff in all senses!)
Among the various interesting articles is a road test, with a bit of technical description, (from 'Motor Cycling', 28 July 1926) of a 1926 Ariel fitted with front and back linked 'servo' brakes.
The basics seem to be a 'stout cable' linking front and back brakes and no fixed stop on the front brakeplate - as the front brake comes on the rotation of the brakeplate also pulls on the rear brake. The full set-up is a bit more sophisticated than this, it has extra features (eg adjustable cable leverage on the rear brake) that must help make it work better.
It was a Bowden idea rather than being something exclusively Ariel, so possibly it could have been fitted to any bike of the time but I've never come across anything like it before - it seemed to me to be a pretty crazy idea but from the (fairly demanding) road test it seems to have worked really well. So much so that I'm actually wondering if I could fit something like it to my '51 (when I eventually get all its bits and pieces back together again)!
Here are scans of the article - it's a review of a '26 500 Ariel as much as of the servo brakes. (And a separate snippet about some accident statistics on the last page too.)
Anyone else fancy trying it out?!!
(Yes - this will find its way into the website online library!)
SG
Among the various interesting articles is a road test, with a bit of technical description, (from 'Motor Cycling', 28 July 1926) of a 1926 Ariel fitted with front and back linked 'servo' brakes.
The basics seem to be a 'stout cable' linking front and back brakes and no fixed stop on the front brakeplate - as the front brake comes on the rotation of the brakeplate also pulls on the rear brake. The full set-up is a bit more sophisticated than this, it has extra features (eg adjustable cable leverage on the rear brake) that must help make it work better.
It was a Bowden idea rather than being something exclusively Ariel, so possibly it could have been fitted to any bike of the time but I've never come across anything like it before - it seemed to me to be a pretty crazy idea but from the (fairly demanding) road test it seems to have worked really well. So much so that I'm actually wondering if I could fit something like it to my '51 (when I eventually get all its bits and pieces back together again)!
Here are scans of the article - it's a review of a '26 500 Ariel as much as of the servo brakes. (And a separate snippet about some accident statistics on the last page too.)
Anyone else fancy trying it out?!!
SG