Here's my dilemma... I want mostly brakes, but shifters would be nice.. [IMG]cyclingforums.com1000Open ↗[/IMG] maybe electronic shifters would do the trick... but no... just.. no. As far as brakes are concerned... It looks like I can use three separate sets of brakes (calipers on the reverse side of where they should be, v-brakes & discs) but talk about clutter.. The little extra weight doesn't really bother me.
What I really want to know is if there a more elegant solution to this conundrum. If you couldn't tell, I really don't like the idea of not being able to stop without moving my hands... being able to shift without moving my hands would also be nice, but not nearly as important to my immediate safety as being able to brake.
FWIW. Well, there isn't any problem attaching auxiliary brake levers on a Drop handlebar's cross bar ...
The auxiliary levers are generally referred to as "CX levers" even though not too many Cyclocross racers actually use them!
The cost is between $20-to-$40 depending on how you source them.
They are available for "vintage" & OS center sections.
If there is a problem with what you want, it is that any brake lines attached to levers on the aero extension will not be inline with the other levers.
If YOU are mechanically clever, then you can attach the "second" brake cable which comes off the aero extension to a brake caliper alongwith the "primary" brake cable and thereby have three levers available for each caliper.
You can't add calipers to the reverse side of their mounts because then you'd be bolting the two calipers together and that's not possible. You also can't add V-brakes to a caliper frame because the mounts aren't there - same with discs.
Out of curiousity, what is this bike being used for? For the extra hassle, weight, and aerodynamics killing parts, you're probably better off not even using aero bars and just hanging in the drops. If you take the time to get used to the aero bars in a safe place, they really aren't that bad. You can take a hand off and stop quite quickly if need be. If you're somewhere that you might need to stop too suddenly for that to work, you shouldn't be down on the aero bars anyway.
alfeng... you had me at auxiliary levers... you had me at auxiliary levers...
Anyway, my bike is a hybrid. It has v-brakes, but it also has mounting points for calipers. The addition of a second set of brakes is actually something I've been considering for some time now. I mostly ride for fun & sometimes "fun" entails a forty mile of commute. Sometimes I even make plans for a summer vacation of riding across the US... & sometimes brakes.. well, break.
did you know the Sawyer Squeeze Filter has a life expectancy of 1 Million Gallons Guaranteed? If you drank a gallon a day, that's like... enough water for 2777.7 years... If you lived in a village of 70 people... that's drinking water for the whole village... for 39.6 years... like if you're in the middle of nowhere with one of these things and the only water you can find is cow pond water... you can drink it. UV treatment? Uh... the sun? boil? wait, eww....
umm... anyway. that's enough shameless accidental advertising. thank you both very much! you have brought me one step closer to my dream & I am grateful. hmm.. shifting..
Regular drop bar levers for cable routing under the bar will deal with the front-of-the-bend position. Interrupter levers will deal with the outside-the-pads position:tektro.com01 prodetail.phpOpen ↗
And the JTEK Aerobrake will take care of the tip-of-the-aero bars position:jtekengineering.comaerobrake.phpOpen ↗ You'd have to get a bit creative when figuring out where to hook up the splitter though.
But the two latter will require the use of a Travel Agent:problemsolversbike.comtravel agentsOpen ↗ to work nicely with with v-brakes. Drop bar levers are available with v-brake pull, but not much point if you're gonna use the aerobrake and the interrupters. Might make sense to turn the whole bike over to caliper brakes.
Dual rim brakes would be possible, but you'd need to add new cable stops. I haven't tried it, but I suspect fitting it all nicely can become a challenge. If you go for that, you could in theory run the v-brakes from a pair of v-pull drop bar brake levers, and the calipers from the interrupters/aerobrakes.
Going to electronic would let you shift from anywhere. Or a Doublecontrol:jtekengineering.comdoublecontroll.phpOpen ↗ would let you shift from both a pair of traditional brifters(but then there's the v-brakes...) and from the aerobars. I guess you could stack two Double controls after each other and hook one set to a pair of thumb shifters if you're stubborn enough. Don't think it'll be particularly user friendly though. Unless you remember to downshift the levers you're not using, you'll block out some sprockets.
I used to have a road bike in the late 1980's and early 1990's that had brake levers (mounted to cover the "lower" position) with bars that were hooked in behind the levers and extended up to cover the upper position. I haven't seen that style brake lever since though. They may still make those...
Two pairs? They work best when used as interrupters. Using them alone, or at the end of the brake wire requires some thought, or you risk fatiguing the button at the end of the cable prematurely. Lever needs to point away from the cable, not along.
Braking from the aero position is a dicey proposition, few weekend warriors can even hold a line or maneuver predictably when aero. Technically it is doable, but it is telling that no mainstream bike design has ever (?) put brake levers on aerobars. Having brake levers all over your cockpit seems excessive. The elbow pads on the aerobars will probably make accessing the levers difficult of access on the top of the handlebar. I'd imagine the end result would be not elegant, ugly and may not perform very well due to excessive runs of cabling. Having your hands on the brakes at all times is overrated, for "fun" riding, commuting and touring you don't need immediate access to braking or shifting. If you are commited to having braking everywhere, the interrupters are a good option. Routing to all 3 positions will get tricky though. Perhaps you can add an extra cable stop to the brake calipers themselves to have a parallel arrangement between the handlebar brakes and the aero brakes. A more expensive, but off the shelf solution would be to use a disc brake frame and fork and use both rim and disc brakes.
I think I see what he's thinking. I ride country roads, with a LOT of deer. When a deer (or drunk) busts out of nowhere, I won't have time to come out of aero and...run over the deer. Emergencies seem to pick odd times to show, and I like the idea of not having to make a dive for my stoppers. Flipping my bike still seems more apeealing than wrapping it around a tree.
I think I see what he's thinking. I ride country roads, with a LOT of deer. When a deer (or drunk) busts out of nowhere, I won't have time to come out of aero and...run over the deer. Emergencies seem to pick odd times to show, and I like the idea of not having to make a dive for my stoppers. Flipping my bike still seems more apeealing than wrapping it around a tree.
But at the same time, trying to do a balls-out stop from the aerobars is going to throw him right off the bike. Stopping fast is limited by weight transfer. With so much of your weight forward, you can't stop very fast without getting ejected. You can likely stop faster by taking the 1/4 of second required to hop off the aerobars, lean back properly, and grab two fists full of brake. If a deer or other being jumps out so close in front of you that you don't have time to reach off the aerobars, you likely wouldn't have been able to stop in time no matter where your brake lever is located.
I guess I stand corrected - there are products to tie a brake into areobars: http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/muliple-lever-brake-splitter-installationhttp://jtekengineering.com/aerobrakeclampon.php The justification for it is to scrub speed while in the aero position not as a safety enhancement. In most cases this is a contradiction, if you are going to slow or brake then getting out of a tuck is not a bad thing. Most posters online are biased against it, a few slowtwitch posters had installed it and claimed it was a waste of money and time. You could use this setup to put as many brake levers as you want into a line, but each time you cut into the housing and add an adapter you diminish the performance of the brake system. 4 seconds is an awful long time to move from the bars to the hoods.
Quarter second? Takes me 4 seconds. That's a lot of distance when you're breaking the sound barrier on a wooded country road.
What you are doing during that eternity? You can reach your left (or right if you're one of those Euro folk) hand for the hood and grab the front brake in a fraction of a second without even leaving your aero position. The second your hand hits the hood, you can take your right (left) hand off aerobars and do the same, then come up to a normal position and brake fully. If bike geometry and skill allows, you can even do both hands at once.
