In article ,
says...
David Kerber wrote:
In article . net,
says...
"Bernie" wrote in message
...
My brakes never failed and I don't remember ever hearing about bad
coaster brakes. In that day we were all aware that "racing" bikes
with lever brakes were death traps because if you applied the front
brakes too hard you would fly over the bars. (!!!)

Uh, do you still believe this?

Why not? It's true? In this case, "too hard" means hard enough to
lock
the front, therby causing an endo (on most bikes, anyway).

As recently mentioned somewhere (possibly even earlier in this thread, but I
can't be bothered to find it):
Locking the front would simply cause it to slide out to one side, much like
locking the rear. An endo is when you brake hard enough to exceed the
pitch-over point, but not hard enough to lock up the front.

Do you really think you can slide the front on a typical road bike on
clean pavement? I've seen a few people (not many) lock the fronts while
going straight, and they've always gone over the front, apparently
because the tire had too much traction to slide.

Of course hitting the front brakes too hard on a corner is an entirely
different matter, because you have a sideways component to the
frictional force adding to the deceleration component.

....

--
Dave Kerber
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