How Do Rod Brakes Work? A Visual Primer

It is probably not an overstatement to say that the majority of bicycles in the world have rod brakes. They are a staple component on millions of roadster bicycles pumped out each year by venerable (and huge) Asian manufacturers like Flying Pigeon, Phoenix, Avon, Neelam, and Hero.

The Chinese manufacturers are starting to switch to mountain bikes, but the black rod brake roadsters are still for sale next to the mountain bikes in many places.

Classic Humber roadsters for sale next to"mountain bikes" (with both bar ends and baskets!) in Nampula, Mozambique.

In the US today it’s extremely rare that you run across a bicycle with rod brakes. In fact until I recently looked more closely at some rod brakes, I did not even fully understand how they work. I’m still no expert, but I took some photos as I looked at old Indian roadsters in Mozambique, and thought I’d share them. Forgive me (and correct me!) if I get the exact terminology wrong (is there a name for the various pivoting joints?).

Let’s start at the rider’s hands. The rod brake levers connect at the center of the handlebars to a couple of spring-loaded pivots, where the first set of vertical rods are connected. These rods connect to the next rod via a sleeved joint, allowing adjustment of rod length and thus brake tension.

Rod brakes are often called “stirrup brakes” because of their shape. The front brake pulls up against the underside of the front rim, necessitating a different rim design than we are used to, called a Westwood rim, with room beside the spokes for the brake pads to make contact on the rim.

Extra points for this bike hack: using old inner tubing at the pivot to help the rear brake stay open until pressure is applied.

Meanwhile, as you can see, the rod for the rear brake engages a pivot at the top of the downtube. These Indian bikes have the rear brake rod coming down from the handlebars in front of the head tube, however some Chinese models like Phoenix move it to the side of the head tube and engage a different design of pivot. Here’s my photo of the pivot on an old Indian bike compared to a new Chinese Flying Pigeon I found on Flickr.

Notice anything funny? Yes the rear brake is on the left.

The rear brake rod continues along under the downtube and pulls another pivot just in front of the bottom bracket.

That pivot pulls the rear brake forward against the rim of the back wheel, parallel to the chain stays, to which it is attached.

Rod brakes are simple, bombproof parts, and you see them still working on ancient rusty Asian bikes (“black mambas”) across many African countries. I’ve never ridden more than a short distance on a roadster with rod brakes, and I hear their stopping power is so-so, but they are easy to adjust and maintain and they work. On the other hand I have ridden on several new-ish Chinese mountain bikes in Ethiopia (see my short video) where the caliper brakes were completely shot, as were the shifters, making them effectively brakeless one-speed bikes with lots of rattling parts hanging off them (as well as nine or ten unused cogs). I’ll take brakes that work so-so over brakes that don’t work at all, any day of the week, and especially on the day I’m riding a 50-pound bag of charcoal to market.

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(This is part of a series of Bikejuju posts about bicycles in Mozambique. Find all the Mozambique posts here. Or more broadly, all the Bikejuju African bike posts are here.)