I used to ride an MZ 250, a company bike, about 30 years ago while working as a courier. They had a particularly nasty front drum brake. It was pretty ineffective in dry weather, I once got a 6 month driving ban for "brakes not adjusted correctly", when in fact they were as good as you gcould get them on an MZ. When I got pulle dover, the cop told me to apply the front brake , while he tried to pull the bike forwards. Bingo! Despite me grabbing the lever as hard as I could, which was in perfectt adjustment, he was able to turn the front wheel with little effort. Bye bye license for 6 months
. Can it get much worse , I hear you ask? Indeed it can, the same front brake would not work at all in the wt, no matter how hard you pulled! I say it wouldn't work, not quite true. You would despeartely heave on the lever for several seconds, with ZERO braking, until the brake would emit a high pitched squeel. At this point you had better let go of the lever, as the front wheel was about to lock !!!! So that was it, from NOTHING to LOCK UP, with nothing in between. Of course the brakes perfectly matched the Eastern European Pneumant tyres, which would regularly slide out from under you while attempting VERY MODERATE cornering in the DRY!!! We all had so many spills (you can imagine what they were like in the wet), that all the company riders went on strike one morning until the boss sent us off to get some British rubber. It was under great protes, as he was rather careful with his money to say the least. I hope you're reading this Schister Temple! His issue was that the tyres were showing no visible signs of wear after 8 or 10 THOUSAND miles!!! No wonder we used to callthem the Wooden Tyres
. Yes, the MZ was about as retro as it gets, in that nasty Eastern Bloc kind of way and potentially deadly on the choc full , rain soaked streets of Britain. They were cheap though
. To be fair , they were pretty reliable bikes and the later models did get an excellent Brembo front disc. I do sometimes wonder how many riders didn't survive the old "Supa 5" models though
. So yes, drum brakes can have there foibles, but hopefully those on the lovely Enfield are much better than those dreadful MZ's.