Hydraulic drum brake

Howard

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davidd

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Radial master cylinder pumps are designed to be in line, that is as you squeeze the brake the piston heads toward the handlebar. In the past they have been used almost exclusively by GP racers, but they have been available to the general public for at least a decade. The advantage is availability of larger bore pumps in a smaller size with a remote master. My friend with the Prince mounted the master in the corner of the HB muff.

Look at any Suzuki GSXR and it has a radial pump. Sizing aside, they are usually available on Ebay for little money. I am not pushing this, I just want you to have the info. No sense solving problems that you do not have.

David
 

Howard

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Look at any Suzuki GSXR and it has a radial pump. Sizing aside, they are usually available on Ebay for little money. I am not pushing this, I just want you to have the info. No sense solving problems that you do not have.

David[/QUOTE]

Thanks David. The only time I was close to a GSXR1000 I was riding it, and the scenery was going past so quickly I wasn't looking at the controls.
I do remember thinking I needed a bigger crash hat because my grin was too big for the one I've got.

H
 

roy the mechanic

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the only standard fitment hydraulic drum brakes i can remember were from b m w + harleys. neither were very good. when i looked into this many years ago, the problem was finding wheel cylinders physically small enough to fit in a motorcycle drum. whilst it is not impossible, if you want to go for "wet" brakes, it will be much easier+cheaper to fit discs.
 

BigEd

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I'd thought it may be simple to replace the cable operation with a jap lever master cylinder and a slave cylinder to pull (push) the lever at the wheel end, then juggle the piston sizes to give increased force at the wheel end. I'm not sure that the master cylinder would move enough fluid - disc brake pistons don't have as much travel as drum brake levers

H

If you are going to just use hydraulics to move the external lever on the brake plate I think you will need quite a bit of travel. I spoke to a couple of people last evening about hydraulic operated drum brakes. My friend with the Ariel used a single Mini slave cylinder. Another told me about a Norton full width brake that used two Mini slaves internally to operate twin leading shoes. This one apparently works very well. My brother has the bits to sometime try to convert a Matchless full width hub to TLS using Mini slaves and Mini brake shoes. Mini slaves come in 15/16" and 1" diameters I'm told.
 

Howard

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Thanks all. I don't want to butcher the good looking brake drum, so I can see I'll have to have a long think about the alternatives when the weather warms up and I can get in my garage. The problem is, when the weather warms up it's Vincent riding time.

H
 

John Cone

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Knowing how many people that have had cracked brake drums on vincents I would be very wary as to putting any kind of hydraulic pressure on them unless you made them of a more substantial material. If they are set up correctly, and this does take sometime, there is no problem with a standard set up.
 
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