Coaster brake

I've considered doing the same thing. Just remove the pawls and let my rim brakes do the job. There've been two things stopping me. One is that if you rely on rim brakes, even two of them, you'd better be sure they're always working really well. I'm more comfortable with two rims and a coaster. The other reason is that if I'm going to do without the coaster brake, then I want a rear end that has multi-speeds.

So I've stuck with the one speed and coaster brake so far.

About the third or fourth time I rebuilt my Cranny hub I got sick of it, too. So I ordered a brand new Wheelmaster with 12 gauge spokes and Shimano CB-110 hub. The stock Cranbrook hub is a copy of that. But the Shimano has a better reputation. That was last summer. I haven't yet even used the new rear wheel because that Cranbrook hub has been doing well since then.

I can't really account for the, now, smooth sailing after having a good deal of trouble in the first year. Though I do understand the workings of that hub better, having had to disassemble it a few times.

Here's my advice; trash pick one-speed bikes or just the wheels. Little kids bikes will do if you can't find 26 inchers. Now you've got some spare parts. Change the grease in that hub with each change of season. Maybe that's more than it really needs. But this is a sensitive part of the bike. No harm in giving it extra attention. And keep your cone wrench (14 mm, I think) and your 11/16 wrench with you at all times and keep an eye on the bearing/cone tightness.

You can do a 'rough and ready' bearing adjustment without even removing the wheel.

Too tight and the wheel doesn't turn all that well. Too loose and interior components start suffering damage.

You can convert a coaster hub to freewheel. You will still need to attach the arm to the frame, otherwise it can spin around. What you want to do is take the hub apart. Inside, you will find two brake shoes and a clutch. The clutch has a spring in it. When you pedal backwards, the clutch is pushed inward, causing the shoes to make contact with the inside of the hub. What you will want to do is toss the shoes, then take the clutch and remove the spring that's inside of it. Then get 3 washers the inner diameter of the axle and outer diameter of the clutch, and slide them onto the axle before the clutch goes back on. Then put the clutch back on and reassemble the hub like normal. Be sure to use a cone wrench to tighten the locknut, and once you've got it back together, you will no longer have a coaster brake. When you pedal backwards, the hub will freewheel.

thanks for the excellent suggestion on both the parts hubs and the removal of the parts in the hub
clfxwill

gphil said:

Brake a few weeks back grabbed for a couple seconds and managed to bend the arm that connects to the frame. I had this thing apart when I got the bike to make sure of lube and two other times. The question is, can one take the paws out leaving the rest inside and then do away with the arm? I have caliper brake on the rear now and it does a good job. If I can't , going to do something different. Don't care much for the Cranny hub back there but then don't know too much about what is quality here anyway. Continuing learning experience. gphil

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i wouldnt mess with doing a coaster to free wheel conversion... it can be done and there are actuall kits out there for it but.....all they are is a new spring and some washers to space the drum from the other side with out it locking together when you back pedal, you need to remove the whole guts and pull the pads and remove the arm and insert the new spring and the RIGHT amount of washers witch takes some time putting it together testing and pulling it appart !

i tend to stay away from coaster breaks now unless i know its a well made heavy dutie one ! i have had a coaster break explode on me and lock up the rear wheel going 30mph !!!

the break shoe inside the hub cracked n half cause it was made from cheaply casted steel and crunched up sidways in the hub digging into the hubs outer wall and locking it up solid !

i posted a whole thread about it on here about 3 months ago, and believe me it was not due to neglect or improper lubrication ! i kept good care of it and had fresh grease in it ! the hubs casted break shoes were just cheap and not designed to break the hub at 35mph and could not with stand the repeaated stress of racing and street riding and it clean snapped in half flipped up and destroyed my hub and almost me !!!!!!!!

here are the pics if you want to see what can happen to a coaster hub under motorized abuse its clearly not meant for ... i just dont believe that any coaster hub is meant for hard breaking at 30-35 mph repeatedly ! they are built to stop slow moving cruser bikes and dont hold up well to stress from my experiance

this was the second hub i destroyed ! the first got loose and wobbly no matter how i tried to adjust it so i swapped out to a brand new hub with new grease and in less than 200 miles the break pad snapped flipped up and locked up and destroyed my hub

since i have swapped to a 7 speed shimano hub and derailer i have not had a single problem and i have had the smothest ride yet ! not to mention how nice it is to be able to shift when i want to pedal !

if your raceing or riding fast down the road and go to break and one of your 2 or 3 pads snaps like the one i posted .... you best have on a helmat and all you knee pads and elbow pads cause your going down !!!!

That's nuts.
I've got an old Sachs coaster hub out in my shed. It's built like a brick privy. It grips like a vice. And when I had it apart to regrease the bearings I noticed the beauty of the design: its shoes are held together by an expanding spring clip. No wonder it had such instantaneous release and such fine control. I'm sorely tempted to build a bike just to put the Sachs hub in it. But I might be persuaded to sell it, depending on the cost of shipping. I dunno though. It's a sweet hub.

I just remove the paws and arm and put it back together. Back pedaling seemed a little sketchy, but I've never had a problem. In the end I put the brake back together and made a new brake arm to go around my sprocket on a adaptor.

http://motorbicycling.com/showthread.php?p=554144

greaser_monkey_87 said:

You can convert a coaster hub to freewheel. You will still need to attach the arm to the frame, otherwise it can spin around. What you want to do is take the hub apart. Inside, you will find two brake shoes and a clutch. The clutch has a spring in it. When you pedal backwards, the clutch is pushed inward, causing the shoes to make contact with the inside of the hub. What you will want to do is toss the shoes, then take the clutch and remove the spring that's inside of it. Then get 3 washers the inner diameter of the axle and outer diameter of the clutch, and slide them onto the axle before the clutch goes back on. Then put the clutch back on and reassemble the hub like normal. Be sure to use a cone wrench to tighten the locknut, and once you've got it back together, you will no longer have a coaster brake. When you pedal backwards, the hub will freewheel.

Click to expand...

I don't know if the "three washer" trick is mentioned in other posts, but this (along with removing the clutch clip, spring & internal washer) is the secret to good results disabling the coaster brake. Simply removing the brake shoes causes peddle positioning after backpeddling to be imprecise. With the washers in there you can backpeddle to position them for an easy take-off after the stop. The washers I used on my CB-110 hub were Hillman #43764 - 5/16 flat washers that are about 0.08" thick, each. A diagram is available at: https://www.google.com/search?q=shi...ving%2F2010%2F08%2Fbike-repair-zen%2F;480;366 The spring & related parts removed are shown in #9 of the diagram.

I didn't have any problems with the operation of the coaster brake, but since I have front & rear rim brakes it is a big advantage, for me, to position the peddles for an easy start in stop & go traffic.

--Rich

A good quality coaster rear brake used with a decent front brake will slow or stop a motorbike at the higher speeds.

When someone bought a Whizzer kit back in the day, they would often not add a front brake. So Whizzer recommended a Morrow Rear hub because of the large brake shoes and heavy duty components. The paper boys carried such a load, it's the only one that would stop them. Of course the stopping power more than doubled when a front brake is also installed.






A friend of mine purchased a Shimano heavy duty coaster brake for his Whizzer. So good quality, heavy duty coaster brake hubs are available.
I also like the stopping power of a Sachs or vintage Bendix hub. New Departure hubs also brake well but require more maintenance and got hotter when applied.

Msrfan beat me to it. I was going to comment that not all coaster brakes are equal. I like the old Bendix and the Sachs both.,
SB