When I was around 9 years old my neighbor showed me a quick cure for any brake failure... the "Fred Flintstone Experience"! Place your left shoe slightly in between the seat tube and the rear tire and depress as needed. Of course when youre 9 or 10 we wanted to see who could leave the longest skid mark on the neighbors sidewalk so "as needed" meant "Double live gonzo"!
----Original Message Follows---- From: Sheldon Brown <CaptBike@sheldonbrown.com> To: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>,Tom Dalton <tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com> CC: Classic Rendezvous <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Subject: Re: [CR]Mafac brakes Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 12:48:12 -0400
Quoth Jerry Moos:
> I've been amazed at the number of high end bikes on eBay pictured with
>the shoes backwards. Of course, it's a little harder to do this with
>Campy, or other shoes with integrated wheel guides, since it is pretty
>obvious if you have installed the shoe upside down. But if you switch a
>shoe right to left or front to back, you can still get the open end to the
>front.
When I was maybe 13 or so, my main bike was a J.C.Higgins 3 speed, first bike I ever owned with a hand brake. I put it together from parts I found in the town dump.
It only had one brake, a cheap rear caliper, and one day I "overhauled" it and accidentally put the shoes on back-asswards.
Shortly thereafter I was riding down Abbott Hall Hill, the steepest hill in Marblehead, Mass., and needed to slow down for a family of pedestrians crossing the street halfway down. Thffffffpt! went one of my brake shoes, and I had no brakes. There's a very busy intersection at the bottom of Abbott Hall Hill, and I coulda been croaked if I had not had the good fortune to crash into the 4 year old girl who didn't get out of my way fast enough.
Since that time, I've developed a sixth sense for backward brake shoes. Any time I find myself within a quarter of a mile of a bike with backwards brake shoes an alarm bell goes off in my head...
Sheldon "http://sheldonbrown.org/bicycle.html#jchiggins" Brown
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