Drum brake cable pull

Don't know about the ratio, but the drum brake on the tandem is for
scrubbing off speed when the bike is going down hill and you don't want
to fry the tires off the rims by over use to limit speed. The weight of
the tandem is so much that it can really take some effort to haul that
puppy down from speed. The drag brake lets you keep the speed under
control without overuse of the rim brakes. The hub might be acceptable
for use as a commuter if you have a good front rim brake and you don't
mind the extra weight of the rear hub brake.

meb said:

Picked up a tandem road wheelset for use on a commuter bike (from a Santana road bike). Rather than mount the tandem levers to operate two brakes, I think I’ll mount a lever on the aerobars. Is the cable pull ratio for the drum brake consistent with road or mt. bike levers?

They require more cable pull than standard road lever, but not so much more that it can't be done with a road lever.
Check out Sheldon Brown's coverage on the topic:
sheldonbrown.comtandem brakes.htmlOpen ↗

We use a Sun Tour command shifter for ours and it works fine. We don't need it much in most of Illinois, but there are some places we have traveled that I wouldn't try it without.
David Ornee, Western Springs, IL

fixedgearhead said:

Don't know about the ratio, but the drum brake on the tandem is for
scrubbing off speed when the bike is going down hill and you don't want
to fry the tires off the rims by over use to limit speed. The weight of
the tandem is so much that it can really take some effort to haul that
puppy down from speed. The drag brake lets you keep the speed under
control without overuse of the rim brakes. The hub might be acceptable
for use as a commuter if you have a good front rim brake and you don't
mind the extra weight of the rear hub brake.

I've used front and rear drums with regular road levers on my commuter
bike for over 20 years now:

http://www.os2.dhs.org/pictures/gallery/bikes/dsc01467

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John ([email hidden])

daveornee said:

They require more cable pull than standard road lever, but not so much more that it can't be done with a road lever.
Check out Sheldon Brown's coverage on the topic:
sheldonbrown.comtandem brakes.htmlOpen ↗

We use a Sun Tour command shifter for ours and it works fine. We don't need it much in most of Illinois, but there are some places we have traveled that I wouldn't try it without.
David Ornee, Western Springs, IL

Not much a stopping problem here in the metro DC area in dry conditions either. But on those occaisions when I get caught in the rain, I'd like to have one brake that works properly in the wet, particularly if going downhill in the rain.

Sounds like I can get away with either. Since I haven't mounted a brake on the aero bar yet I still go either way, if you were to mount the drum controlling lever on aero bars, would you go with road levers or mountain bike levers? Or do you think I'm better off using a drop lever on the drum and controlling the rear rim brake from the aero bars?

Thanks