The most bizarre thing happened to me at the conclusion of this morning's ~20 mile ride: As I pulled my Raleigh DL-1 into the house, I heard something drop off onto the floor. I found a very small nut. I pulled both brake handles on my Raleigh DL-1, and verified the rod brake linkages were working. My first thought was, "Oh, it's probably nothing important, probably just from the chain guard or something."

I checked around a little bit and looked more closely at things, and found that the nut had, indeed, fallen from the rod brake linkage going to the rear brake, meaning the screw would have fallen out soon afterward. Instead, I put the nut back on, with loc-tite this time, and found a couple other similar nut and bolt combinations, and loc-tited those as well.

The lesson to be learned, I suppose, is that if you have a rod-brake bike, don't assume it's been properly maintained. Give it a good going over and make sure all the little nuts are tight. There's a little knack to it; the nuts are actually lock nuts, and the rod brake yokes are also threaded. So you want to tighten down the screws so that there is still enough play to allow the linkage to move, then tighten down the lock nut to hold it. And maybe use some loc-tite to make sure it doesn't come loose.