Rear Brake Locks

H-D used to have an available mechanical rear parking brake lock (a little saw-toothed lever that bolts to the brake pedal) on sidecar-equipped Pans and Servi-cars. Seems like they dropped this feature when hydraulic rear brakes were introduced. Is there any reason that this type lock won't work with "juice brakes"? Just curious as I see these ratchet levers occassionally at swap meets and it would have been very useful on the sidecar rig I owned many years ago.

CSM

I don't see why you couldn't use one on hydro. brakes as long as they are well maintained. If your seals, brake lines or fittings are worn, the fluid under pressure could leak making your parking brake ineffective. If the leak is in the drum and saturates the brake lining you may be in for more trouble when you hit the road. Some servi-cars with mechanical front drum brakes came equipped with parking brake levers as well. The notched mechanism was on the hand lever. One option might be to convert your front drum to a 2 cam mechanical system and install this instead of the rear.

They went to a front brake lock. A simple device on the hand lever.Refer to the parts book for illustration.

Maybe they went to front lock because when cooled down the drum would contract and you wouldn't get the lock off or the extra pressure would cause seals to leak down.

If a brake drum cools down while the shoes have pressure on it the drum will be severely out of round untill is is evenly heated up again.

Actually, I have a '68 Servi that has the front brake lever lock. Seeing one of the old foot brake pedal locks at Davenport caused me to wonder why H-D switched to this type. Just curiosity on my part.

CSM