Half-width vs full-width Ariel brakes

[Greybeard]

I recently invited a chap to test ride my Plunger A10. I wanted to know how it compared with others. This bloke rides a swinging arm A7 with full width Ariel type brakes. He was amazed how much better my brakes were. I've always thought they were good but put it down to my non-furious riding style  . Mind you, I've had quite a few emergency stops and the front brake is really good. When coming to a standstill I tend to put my left foot down while the right foot is selecting neutral; the front brake doing most of the stopping. 

[morris]

Same here GB. The plunger has much better brakes.
But much depends on the quality of the linings.
The SA's FW hub front brake used to be lousy, but since changing the linings to NOS Ferodo now comes close to the plunger's. My planning for wintertime is taking the wheels from the SA off, get the drums trued and change the rear linings to Ferodo also.
In my experience, those "new style" bonded shoes come close to nothing in the slow down department...   

[Black Sheep]

The Ariel hub brakes were never highly rated - possibly better than the BSA full width, not that that's much of a recommendation. The BSA half width 8" brake has always been the best - even better than the 190mm Gold Star one.
Yes, modern bonded linings are much too hard. They are made from materiallsuited to cars which have servo-assisted hydraulic brakes, not hand cable operated bike brakes. Find some Ferodo AM2 or similar (NOT AM4) linings and your brakes will work as designed.

[JulianS]

Another vote here for 8 inch half width hub - much better that the 8 inch full width.

If you can find it Ferodo MZ41 - woven with zinc wire included - is one of the best old linings. Just dont inhale the dust. The moulded AM2 is easier to rivet to shoes than MZ41.

[scotty]

I have ariel full width hubs on my A10 and 8 inch half width hub on the B33

Of the two the 8 inch half width stops up better

S

[KiwiGF]

I have Ariel brakes on my A10, rear is ok but the front not great. It's not THAT much worse than the 8" in my limited experience from riding 2 other A10s, but I've never tried to improve it, it has the "green" linings, which supposedly are the best, but took 1000s of miles to bed in.

I intend to investigate how to get the brakes to work the best they can by going as far as trying to get some lining material and rivets if necessary, and matching/grinding the shoes to closely fit the drum during operation, to see if that makes a difference. It seems to a bit of an "art" to get linings to fully contact the drum, with single leading shoe brakes.

I was prompted to do this after recently buying some new shoes with bonded linings for the 7" brake on my b31. They worked little better than the (decades old) spongy and worn shoes I took out! On inspection they had a diameter of about 2mm less than the drum (which has not been skimmed by much), so they currently only have a very small contact area with drum, and so will take ages to bed in and get a better contact area. The lining material is also pretty thin. They are EMGO brand and I would not recommend them.

If they were machined/grand  to the correct size they would be so thin in the middle section they would not last long......so basically once they are fully bedded in, it will be time to change them.

[JulianS]

Recently relined rear brake of A10 with AM2 and found it bedded in very quickly no need to grind or machine anything.

The famous green linings were Ferodo AM4 racing linings - moulded with aluminium wire included - which had a dubious reputation for road use - some users found it took a long time to bed in, could be spongy and could squeal and had a short life.