We have an Arai drum brake on our tandem. It has worn down to the point that inner cam does not expand the shoes sufficiently for full braking power. Does someone have experience with relining/replacing the pads? Perhaps a motorcycle shop can do this?

By the way, we bike in mountains and big hills fully loaded for camping. The drum brake is critically important. I would not trust any of the newer disk/v-brake combinations to dissipate the heat. It bugs me that tandem makers have stopped using drum brakes.

Try vintage Brake in CA. There specialty is motorcycles but I'll bet they can help. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...intage%20brake

I've never EVER heard of anyone wearing through the brake material. There are hundreds of Arai drum brakes out there with gobs more than 10k miles. They've always been a lifetime kind of pad.

My goodness, please share what you think you have on that brake in terms of miles and favorite trips.

I have one for sale. It is barely used in the nearly flat land where we live so I removed it several years ago to save weight.

We use two cantilever rim brakes and a rear disk and have no problems with loaded touring, on and off-road, in the Pacific Coast Range and the Cascades. Sure, our rotor is a bit blue from the heat, but it does the job. We put the brakes to the test since my captain hates to descend at speed; I use the disk brake to keep things at a gentle roll on even the steepest descents. The exception to slow descending for us is when we are somewhere like the Rockies, where the descents tend to be relatively flat and have long sight lines. When we're there, she allows the bike to roll up to fifty or sixty mph.

It's much better than the Phil Wood disk on our old tandem, and not prone to explosions. I really do need to upgrade that thing someday.

Tandems East has pads for the Arai drum (or at least their website claims that). You might get lucky and find a set at a BMX shop.

The brake still has significant material, but worn down such that the thing (cam?) that separates the shoes rotates past the working position does not further separate the shoes, causing some loss of braking power. The brake has 50K. Our weight with bike, gear, and us is 450 pounds. Long mountain descents really heat up the brake. Some years back when biking the Skyline (Shenandoah) and coming to a rest stop I sprayed a bit of water on the brake, it sizzled...could have cooked an egg on it. Same for some Rockies rides. I trust this brake with our lives...it would take sometime to reach that confidence level with rim + disk brake. I feel another rant coming on about disk brakes on a tandem.

apage4u...yes I will buy. Thank you...hendrich@cmu.edu

I also have a nearly-new one in my parts bin that I'd sell, if the other one fall through. PM me for details. I'm in the Philadelphia area.