steel-wheeled ladies bike, better braking needed

[bm0p700f]

Alloy 26x1 3/8" are definatley available, I sell them to order with sturmy geared hubs as well as do many others. In fact a resto I am doing is calling for some.

I have an old Peugoet ladies bike in at the moment and the brakes on that are not good even with new pads on the steel rims. Alloy rims are needed.

 

[Jonny69]

You shouldn't need dual pivot brakes in my opinion. Soft rubber pads are usually all that's needed in my experience. The mistake some of my peers have made is to use the long aero road brake blocks, which have a larger surface area but are a really hard compound and do nothing for the braking on old steel wheels. They just don't grip the wheels. It's the elcheapo short rectangular rubber ones you want, for about £3 per pair maximum.

Wet weather performance is always poor on chrome wheels. I've tried textured rims, leather faced brake blocks and plain rubber ones and they're all pretty bad unfortunately. The trick seems to be to occasionally apply the brakes lightly to scrub off the water.

 

[DxMachina]

I was having a conversation in real life with a guy who's rebuilding an old 3-speed and he threw in the following little gem

'of course I can't use modern alloy 26x 1+3/8 wheels on this as the axles are different sizes'

Can anyone comment if thats true? It never occurred to me that two 650A wheels with nutted axles might not have the same axles. I don't even know if he meant length or width, now i think of it.

 

[Little Al]

I was having a conversation in real life with a guy who's rebuilding an old 3-speed and he threw in the following little gem

'of course I can't use modern alloy 26x 1+3/8 wheels on this as the axles are different sizes'

Can anyone comment if thats true? It never occurred to me that two 650A wheels with nutted axles might not have the same axles. I don't even know if he meant length or width, now i think of it.

He was probably refering to the fact that older axle were/are 5/16th`s & newer/ current ones are m8. Nuts won`t fit but they are much the same diameter