Originally Posted by
LarrySellerz
sheldon brown is ridiculously legendary and he says only using the front is fastest, because the rear gets unweighted so any braking force applied to the rear will cause it to skid
Originally Posted by
njkayaker
You are definitely not understanding the basic argument.
No one is claiming that the rear brake alone (or with a front brake not used heavily) has no "braking force".
Using the rear brake alone doesn't have the front-weighting issues that occurs with using the front brake hard.
that’s not how i interpreted larry’s statement, which didn’t specify whether the rear brake was being used alone or in tandem with the front. i agree that the dynamics are different when both brakes are used, but if there was no load whatsoever on the rear wheel, you’d have other problems than slowing down. at least i would. my example holds if you add a small amount of front brake before gradually applying the rear. it does NOT (at least in my universe of bikes and hills) result in any kind of instantaneous skid/lockup. in fact it slows the bike down faster.