I’m not sure you appreciate how literally technically correct you are.
The harder you brake in the front, the more the weight shifts forward. At the point you start to do a stoppie – when the front brakes are applying maximum force to the road – the weight on the rear wheel drops to zero and thus the stopping force it’s applying drops to zero as well.
In other words, the rear brake gets less useful the harder you try to brake.
For maximum deceleration, the main thing you need to do isn’t to try to use the rear brake more, but instead get out of the saddle and stick your butt as far back as you can, shifting the weight back and making it as hard to get to that point of rear wheel liftoff as possible.
Instead of shifting back, my hard stop showboating method was to swing my leg over to the other side and crotch beside the frame. My head was level with the bars, my ass next to the rear wheel. It barely stoppied. Amusing to think my pain rubber rim brakes survived just fine
That same position snuck me under a parking lot gate so I didn’t have to be obnoxious on a sidewalk
Oh I know the physics, I just also have the practical experience to back up the theory :)
I also drive cars and work on them and on literally every car I’ve owned, front brakes are beefier for this reason. They need to dissipate more heat because they will be doing most of the work. In fact, EV manufacturers have started doing rear drums because on an EV, rear brakes do so little work, disk brake calipers will just seize from rust.
I mainly just braked with the front but I knew just how hard to brake without turning it into a stoppie
Rear brake is more useful for skids than braking lol
I’m not sure you appreciate how literally technically correct you are.
The harder you brake in the front, the more the weight shifts forward. At the point you start to do a stoppie – when the front brakes are applying maximum force to the road – the weight on the rear wheel drops to zero and thus the stopping force it’s applying drops to zero as well.
In other words, the rear brake gets less useful the harder you try to brake.
For maximum deceleration, the main thing you need to do isn’t to try to use the rear brake more, but instead get out of the saddle and stick your butt as far back as you can, shifting the weight back and making it as hard to get to that point of rear wheel liftoff as possible.
See also: https://bike.bikegremlin.com/813/bicycle-braking-technique/
Instead of shifting back, my hard stop showboating method was to swing my leg over to the other side and crotch beside the frame. My head was level with the bars, my ass next to the rear wheel. It barely stoppied. Amusing to think my pain rubber rim brakes survived just fine
That same position snuck me under a parking lot gate so I didn’t have to be obnoxious on a sidewalk
Oh I know the physics, I just also have the practical experience to back up the theory :)
I also drive cars and work on them and on literally every car I’ve owned, front brakes are beefier for this reason. They need to dissipate more heat because they will be doing most of the work. In fact, EV manufacturers have started doing rear drums because on an EV, rear brakes do so little work, disk brake calipers will just seize from rust.