Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Sheldon Brown's (and many others') interpretation is what is wrong. It's a trick of the math...look at the Bicycling Science reference...that when the braking force of the rear wheel goes to zero and the rider is about to go into pitch over when you reach the maximum possible deceleration that a bike can develop.
Worse than that, Bicycling Science is only saying that is the maximum possible braking force for a given weight distribution.
I actually started studying that section because I was certain that Sheldon was wrong and wanted to understand it. I looked at the BScience "90%" statement and saw from the equations that the remaining ~10% would disappear as braking force increased to the tipping point. I guess I gave up too soon. I should have kept thinking.
