Gas Scooter Brakes

Your gas scooter brakes are all that's between you and stopping safely.  Know what to look for and how to maintain them.  

Gas scooter brakes are an important part of any gas scooter for  obvious reasons but are perhaps the most overlooked.  Look at any major site specializing in performance parts to make your scooter go faster and you will not see a corresponding number of upgrades to make it go slower when you brake.  Make sure the braking system of the scooter you purchase is consistent with the scooter's top speed.

Gas scooter brakes come in three basic arrangements and the differences are huge.    Consideration must be given to:

•  Where the scooter will typically be used; off road, pavement, rain, hills etc.

•  The weight of the rider

•  The Scooters top speed

•  In what state of the USA the gas powered scooter will be ridden. 

The three basic arrangements for gas scooter brakes are Drum Brakes, Caliper Brakes and Disc Brakes.

 Here are the differences:

Gas Scooter Drum Brakes  

• This is the most common brake found on gas scooters.  It's design is similar to that found on older cars and motor cycles.  A pair of curved brake shoes expand inside of the scooter's tire hubs, stopping the gas scooter.  Drum brakes are sometimes designed with a strap that goes around the outside of a hub that contracts when actuated.  To the right you can see what a typical band looks like and the drum that it wraps around is also shown below.  This design is more correctly called a strap brake.  Drum brakes work well when the linkages are kept lubricated and the cables to them are not kinked or frayed.  Drum brakes attempt to keep water and dust out, but also can accumulate dirt and brake dust inside of them which cannot easily escape.  When drum brakes require maintenance it means removing the wheel from the frame of the scooter, just like you would do on your car.

Gas Scooter Caliper brakes  

•  Think of your first bicycle with squeeze brakes and that's a caliper brake.  Caliper brakes are nothing more than a clamp that grabs on to the tire or the rim of the tire and causes it to stop rotating.  Caliper brakes are the lowest technology of the three and not all that common except on GoPed gas scooters.  Even their higher performance models are starting to show up with disc brakes though.  Typically very small scooters for children might have caliper brakes.  Caliper brakes biggest problem is their lack of efficiency when they get wet.  Just like your bicycle as a child, when you ride through water watch out!!!  My recommendation is to avoid them where possible.  The ease of maintenance is off set by the poor performance stopping in rainy conditions.

Gas Scooter Disc Brakes

• Top of the line gas scooters will come with disc brakes on the front and back tire.  They are easily identifiable by looking for a shiny plate with slots  attached to the rim of a tire with a clamping device (caliper) that grabs it to stop.  Most modern automobiles come with disc brakes, as do many motorcycles.  Disc brakes have the ability to lock up the tires into a full skid if applied with reasonably strength.  Some states such as California require that the gas powered scooter be able to lock up both wheels in a full skid and scooters labeled as being California compliant will inevitably come with disc brakes.  Many drum brakes cannot lock up the wheel of a rapidly moving gas scooter without excessive hand strength.   One of the great upsides of owning a gas scooter with disc brakes is that the brakes are very easy to maintain.  You can change out the brake  disc brake pads without having to remove the wheels.  Many people like disc brakes for their good looks as well. 

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Gas Scooter Brake Cables

• The biggest maintenance items on gas scooter brakes are the cables that actuate them.  Cables are biggest single factor of brake failure or mal-adjustment.  Better gas scooters will have a small, knurled nut up near the actuator on the handle bars that let's you tighten up and improve the brake response.  However after a year of hard use, you may not be able to increase this adjustment any further.

At this point you need to take some slack out of the cable, OR more importantly replace the brake lining.  Brake lining will either be the pads for disc brakes or the shoes for drum brakes.  When you put in the new linings, much of the slack in the cable will be removed and the brake response will come back fairly close to new scooter condition.  To replace drum brakes, you will have to remove the wheels.  For disc brakes, simply replace the external brake pads and slip new ones in.

I just went to our comparison chart and counted over 15 models with disc brakes.  Some models you will notice have a combination of disc and drum brakes.  Three great gas scooters with disc brakes front and back are the Super Razorbacks, the Rasers, and the Mosquito Hornet.  I like  the Mosquito Hornet  for it's heavy duty build, and of course it has the front and rear disc brakes actuated by a high quality Shimano system.  Use the comparison chart to see the other models with both front and rear disc brakes as well drum/disc combinations.

Like a car, gas scooter tires play a big role in stopping distance.  If you missed our article Tires:  Size Does Matter, here's the link to find it in our archives.

  We try to answer all your questions in the articles above.  Still have a question?   Write to us at info@gas-scooters-on-the-web.com and we'll answer it. 

GOT GAS SCOOTER PARTS?

I get mine from Neo Scooters.  What you see below are actual pictures from their parts catalog.  No more guessing if you have the right part by an obscure description.  They sort by the model of your scooter and have pictures of each part, with the price and part number.  With Free Shipping Included, you cannot go wrong.  Look for their parts link in the lower left corner of the page the link  above on the Neo logo takes you to.

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