Made and fitted an improvised rod brake clamp to my old Raleigh Dawn Tourist 3-speed roadster, using a M8 HT set screw I had to hand. Filed off the thread on one side of the screw to create a flat, then cross drilled it 4mm dia for the rod to go through. Cut the hex head off with a small cordless angle grinder, and smoothed the cut surface with a flat file. Fitted to bike and secured with a flat washer & nyloc nut, then cut off the excess thread length with the grinder - gradually so I didn't overheat the nyloc. Metric coarse isn't the ideal thread as it's deep, so the root diameter is less. It's only a quick get out of trouble bodge/fix though, so I can have two brakes not just one! If the correct clamp that has gone AWOL turns up, I'll refit that. If not, I'll make one myself in my old Myford centre lathe, or I'll do the same as this time but use a 5/16" UNF bolt instead of a metric set screw.
Having got the rear brake working, I've discovered that it's efficiency is shite, and way less than the front brake, which is very good. Looks like I'll be removing the rear brake blocks next and either roughing them up to increase friction, or replacing them. On the plus side, I had a nice relaxed 10 mile road test to add to the 30 miles I did this morning on my Pioneer.
