I'll agree with Harvey that Phil brakes are not to be trusted. I built a lot of custom tandems back when those brakes were au courant, and saw lots of stripped splines. The later model with thicker splines was still not what I'd call reliable, or even a particularly good stopper while it lasted. Clever idea, brilliantly executed (beautiful machining), but fatally flawed.
We only used them as auxiliary brakes on bikes with cantilevers - except one: I built a tandem for a certain Mister Phil Wood, who insisted that the bike have no cantilever braze ons and no brake holes in crown or bridge - it was to be his show bike, but also after that his personal tandem. I hope it didn't actually get ridden much.
I suppose I shouldn't be bad-mouthing a customer like that! Can I salvage some credibility by saying I really liked just about everything else he made?
He supplied us with cool ovalized top tubes that spanned the length of the bike, pierced in the middle for the captain's seat tube - copied a lot after that but in 1980 it was unique as far as I know.
Mark Bulgier Seattle WA USA
Harvey M Sachs wrote [snipped]
> I will never
> again rely on a Phil as the primary brake. Almost all of the
> Phil brakes had a fundamental design flaw: The friction
> element was a fibre disk that gripped the hub with splines
> that matched the splines on the thread-on brake piece. This
> is not acceptable practice for this material, and I was
> stoking a friend's tandem when I stripped out the splines.
> The fibre splines just plain failed.