Long downhill cruise- Coaster brake burnup

shop deals on amazon
Bike Wall
Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
U

user 135

Joined
Dec 4, 2006
Messages
10,825
Reaction score
863
Rating - 100%
3   0   0
I came up with a hairbrain cruise for this summer. Ride from the base area at Bogus Basin Ski Area back to my house in Boise for a BBQ. After reading, this may be a bad idea. Coaster brakes are not made for long downhill decents. Start elevation is 6200ft and ending elevation is 2600 ft over 16 miles.
I figure take the afternoon with lots of breaks to save the brakes.

Here are a couple of links that got me to thinking.
http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/Bi ... urn_up.htm
http://www.bikecircle.com/forums/tech-i ... heory.html

bogus-1.jpg
 
you still got time to get a soapbox durby going...... :mrgreen:
please get as much video as you can and have the top speeds on the speedo reset when you start. sounds like a blast.
wish i could do it. you guys with the big hills are killing me! best i can do is the ski resort downhill in the summer.

but that's not even close to 3600ft in 16 miles.

what is the fastest descent on the road?

have you done it before?

top speed clocked on a bike?

stay safe but ride it like you stole it. 8)
 
Joshua- No we will shuttle the bikes to the top.

Upper Class- Planned for may or June. Will get speed and course using a GPS. Never done it before but road bikers have as that is where I got the white line track from a post on Bikely.com. there are a couple of steeper section where the speed may get high

Does anybody have experience burining up a coaster brake? Probably Fast Eddie.
 
i personally would not try a ride like that with coaster brakes alone. i would not trust a coaster brake to go fast either, they're just not built for it. theyre alot tougher than i prolly give em credit for, but i still would not chance it for my own ride. using rim brakes ya can "butterfly" them or even switch from front to rear to keep the rims from heating up, but idealy for 16 miles a disc brake would work best. be careful with cruisers that have apes on 'em or choppers, by the time they start gettin squirley from goin too fast its hard to get the bike back under control. i tried some speed on a flipped bmx frame with apes and a bent springer fork...dangerous!!!
sounds like a great ride, where is it?
fast eddie outty
 
that's crazy talk. i LOVE it. too bad I'm at the other end of the country in PA.

(on second thought, maybe it's a GOOD thing I'm at the other end of the country in PA...) :lol:

man, would rim brakes even be adequate? i was reading some Sheldon Brown stuff about brakes last night where he talked about rim brakes not being good for tandems in the mountains because they can overheat the rim and tire and blow the tire off the rim... i know we're not talking tandem total weights here, but we are talking LOOOOOOOOOONG descent... lots of time with the rim getting warmer and warmer...

--rick
 
for gravity bikes i double wrap my rims in heat resistant rim tape, i use thorn resistant thick walled tubes, and the tires i use will hold 110psi max. i only air them up 90 psi to allow for expansion. this will negate any problems with rims over heating, and you'd probably burn through a brake pad before youd blow a tube in a set up like my g-bikes use. the idea is that the air in the tube expands when heated by the rims, then blows, but ive never had any problem with rim brakes. i use v-brakes which are the most powerful rim brakes available.
hope that helps, fast eddie outty
 
That's only a hair over 4% grade, Repack the original bearing burner was the high side of 12% but only 1/8th the distance(by todays MTB standards that's barely an XC hill). Are you sure you'll even need brakes? :wink:
 
Socal- I think you are right with the grade. There are flat spots, gentle downhills, and some steeper ones but overall I think it may be doable. I might try this before I sucker 15 friends into smokin their hubs. :mrgreen:

I will let you all know how it turns out.
 
Yeah, good idea on teh test run, you never know. We have some very steep roads near the beach here that have stop signs into blind traffic so you can't bomb them. I have one virtually brand new shimano coaster hub that if I use it hard for just like 100 yards it starts rattling and skipping while freewheeling, take it apart nothing ;ppls wromg, put it back to gether fine until teh next episode, so ya never jnow.
 
science...science...words....uhhhh....beavis?

I'd put an "extra" handbrake on or two and use them all, maybe bring an anchor.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top