Shimano Nexus Brakes

chrisinleedsuk

My Cell X-0 came with Shimano Nexus roller brakes and, to be blunt, they suck. Has anybody managed to tune or modify them to give reasonable performance? Does anybody even jknow how they work? They seem to small to be a drum brake and Shimano's bumf makes no mention of replacing pads, which seems plain odd to me! Any idea guys?

thesmellyone

this site gives loads of info, might be of some use:
http://sheldonbrown.com/nexus-mech.html

Ruston Weals

Lots of info on http://cycle.shimano-eu.com/ covering these brakes. Surprisingly the only maintenance is to give the roller brake a shot of Shimano's special grease once in a while. You may have to pull pretty hard to get decent stopping power but they are hard to beat for low maintenance.

tardington

But! what are they?

Also, while I'm here, what is a Coaster Brake?

chrisinleedsuk

Good question Tardie. To look at they look like they could be teensy tiny drums but I had a spare hub off ebay back in the uk and the big bit on the hub is some sort of power modulator. Oh the irony...

chrisinleedsuk

A coaster brake is, I gather, a german style back pedal brake. Early mountainbikes had them too, hence trail names like repack. I've looked at all Shimano's diagrams and at Sheldon Brown's website and still found almost nothing about the brakes and how to mod them.

meanwhile

What's the brake at the front? It's the one that's going to do all the work anyway; rear brakes are never terribly effective.

will3

Presumably you've seen this:
http://cycle.shimano-eu.com/publish/con ... oller.html

not the best brake in the world, we have one as a drag brake on a tandem. Does work just as well in the wet though, which is nice when you're nearly drowning.

chrisinleedsuk

No, I hadn't seen that. It's as I suspected then, a tiny drum brake. I think the answer may lie in what grease is used inside then (I gather the inards are all geased up, including the pads!)

jethro924

I bought a Carrera Subway 8 from Halfords which comes with front and rear drum brakes. I have converted it to fixed so have done away with the back brake. I must admit the front brake is pants compared to dual pivot calipers that I am used to, but then I rarely use the front brake.

I assume I could swap to discs quite easily as the front fork appears to have all the required mounts to do so. Maybe you might like to swap your front brake for a disc and leave the back brake alone.

Interestingly all the post office bikes seem to have drum brakes obviously to reduce maintainence. They are not the lightest bikes to begin with and when fully loaded, going downhill........

Finally whilst they might "suck" there is a certain smugness being able to brake all you want knowing that you aren't wearing your rims out!

chrisinleedsuk

[true]

chrisinleedsuk

Back in pommeyland with my Maguras now. It's so good to be able to stoppie.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

I was a bit shocked that Trek fitted such poor brakes to the top of the range District, given its £750 price tag these days! :shock: