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What a lovely restoration and also a great read.
Following this restoration has been nostalgic for me as I bought my first mountain bike, an FW Evans ATB in the spring of 1984. The Evans being identical, apart from the branding, to the first Saracen ATB.
As I also wanted to ride it on-road and through city-traffic, I swapped the straight bars for drops and soon headed out to do some off-roading. The only off-road rides I knew of back then were the ones Geoff Apps ran each month from Wendover, in the Chiltern Hills. There I soon learned that hub brakes were far superior to cantilevers in the wet and muddy conditions. So on hearing that SA were bringing out an alloy hub-brake, called the 'Elite' I put in an order and soon converted My Evans over to these.
.
So hence my deja vu whilst reading this thread.
PS. The SA 'Elites' were better than cantilevers in the wet and much quieter in the mud because you no longer get the mud and grit on the rim rubbing against the brake blocks. However, in heavy rain water can get in the drums where it gets trapped inside, eventually mixing with the brake dust and rusting drum to make a brown sludge.
In retrospect, the French Lelue brakes Geoff Apps used were far better. They have drainage holes and patented mechanism that encourage the brake-shoes to self-servo whilst compensating for the uneven brake-shoe wear that plagues other single-cam, cable operated, drum-brakes.
A few years later, SA made some Leleu-type versions of the 'Elite' in partnership with Highpath Engineering. But unfortunately, a machining error on the pre-production prototypes made then self-servo a bit to much, and lock up. As a result they never made it into production, though though are still a few of these prototypes around.
There's also a thread on here in which someone converts a standard SA 'Elite' to a Lelue-type mechanism.
Following this restoration has been nostalgic for me as I bought my first mountain bike, an FW Evans ATB in the spring of 1984. The Evans being identical, apart from the branding, to the first Saracen ATB.
As I also wanted to ride it on-road and through city-traffic, I swapped the straight bars for drops and soon headed out to do some off-roading. The only off-road rides I knew of back then were the ones Geoff Apps ran each month from Wendover, in the Chiltern Hills. There I soon learned that hub brakes were far superior to cantilevers in the wet and muddy conditions. So on hearing that SA were bringing out an alloy hub-brake, called the 'Elite' I put in an order and soon converted My Evans over to these.
.
So hence my deja vu whilst reading this thread.
PS. The SA 'Elites' were better than cantilevers in the wet and much quieter in the mud because you no longer get the mud and grit on the rim rubbing against the brake blocks. However, in heavy rain water can get in the drums where it gets trapped inside, eventually mixing with the brake dust and rusting drum to make a brown sludge.
In retrospect, the French Lelue brakes Geoff Apps used were far better. They have drainage holes and patented mechanism that encourage the brake-shoes to self-servo whilst compensating for the uneven brake-shoe wear that plagues other single-cam, cable operated, drum-brakes.
A few years later, SA made some Leleu-type versions of the 'Elite' in partnership with Highpath Engineering. But unfortunately, a machining error on the pre-production prototypes made then self-servo a bit to much, and lock up. As a result they never made it into production, though though are still a few of these prototypes around.
There's also a thread on here in which someone converts a standard SA 'Elite' to a Lelue-type mechanism.
