[A_A]

Hello there, I have come to love riding tandems so I recently bought a Burley Bossa Nova. In addition to the wonderful Magura HS-66 rim brakes(I am a big fan of Magura products) it also has a rear drum brake. I am unfamiliar with drum brakes in general. Why the redundancy of having a 3rd brake? Is there a place I could learn about care and service of drum brakes? Any info would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Allen

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[TandemGeek]

The answers to your questions are here:
http://www.precisiontandems.com/arai.htm

In short, a drum brake is used on exceptionally steep mountainous descents with lots of switchbacks by most all teams and on steep or long descents by heavy teams, tourists travelling with full panniers, or by folks who just prefer to descend at something less than the higher speeds that tandems can easily achieve where using only rim brakes would cause the rims to overheat which, in turn, softens the tires and causes the air in the inner tubes to expand such that a tire could come unseated and "blow-off" the rim.

[A_A]

Thanks for the info :) Allen