"Protactical" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:I just got a SWB recumbent that comes with caliper brakes, but has a provision for a disc at least
on the front. Right now the calipers are fine, however if I went touring where I have a bigger
load on the bike, and there are steeper hills, it occurs to me I might want the disc. On a regular
bike, I would be comfortable cutting out the rear brake, and having two on the front wheel with
different feels, and a double up on brake reliability. On this bike, I am not yet quite used to
the ballance, it seems as though the rear wheel is if anything even more likely to loose contact
with the road. There could easily be 300-350 on this bike at times.
I'm not really inclined to this solution, but is there such a thing as a 2 brake control fron one
grip? So I could have a disc front, and modest breaking on both wheels from the other grip?
What would be the best setup?
First, I will assume you are talking about operating both front and rear brakes and the calipers are
identical in design/construction? Ie both side pulls, U brakes, V brakes, etc If you are running
front and rear at once, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is balancing the pull due
to the different cable/housing lengths for the front and rear. This can be accomplished by running
the front brake a little looser than the rear. It isn't exact compensation but it will get you very
close and will enable you to set up your own front/rear bias depending on which end you want to
brake a little harder, or if you want both wheels to brake about even. I set up my front brakes like
this on the last trike I built and even with major cable length differences (one being about 6" long
and the other about 30" long), braking is still just about as even as I could get with individual
levers. Just takes a little more playing to set it up to your liking.
There are handy little 2-into-1, or 1-into-2 brake cable adaptors that are used all the time on BMX
bikes. They cost about $10 Cdn each and should be easy to locate at your local bike shop. There are
a number of different styles of these and one is below:
bikeguide.orgmodcable1.jpgOpen ↗
Barring those, there are a number of home-made versions of two into one adapters that can be found
on homebuilder sites. I think Ricky Horowitz has one on his trike design site. I made my own and
tried to make it very simple. The two picture links are below.
jkcc.comtrike%204%20dual%20brake.jpgOpen ↗ and
jkcc.comtrike%204%20dual%20brake%20close%20up.jpgOpen ↗
For the brake handle side of the setup, I took a short piece of 1/4" mild steel round stock, and
drilled a small hole in each end for the brake cables to go through. I took a 1/4" bit and drilled
all the way through the brake lever so the round stock stuck out on both sides of the brake lever.
If you get the measurement right (depending on the thickness of your brake lever) the brake cable
ends are snug against the side of the lever. I added a small washer on each side of mine to make
sure it would pivot as smoothly as possible while braking.
To make dual cable housing stops for the brake lever housing side, I just used 3 Allen head cap
screws. One 5/16" cap screw that would thread into the axctual brake lever housing. I used two 1/4"
cap screws and cut most of the threaded portion off. I drilled a 1/8" hole down through the center
of each screw for the brake cable to run through. I took the three screws and laid them beside each
other (like this - oOo) face down and welded them together. The cable housing fits very nicely into
the top of the 1/4" cap screws and the 1/8" hole is large enough that there is minimum contact on
the brake cable so minimum chance for wear.
The setup works better than I thought it would and with a little patience, it's not hard to balance
the two brakes so they apply equal braking pressure. Hope it helps 🙂
