Double brake lever

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exavid

New Member
Dec 12, 2009
163
0
0
Medford, OR
I installed a double brake lever on my 2 stroke bike so that there'd be only two levers on the handlebars. The first problem was the C type sidepulls required a LOT of grip pressure to stop the bike quickly. After hearing about the combination throttle, kill switch and dual brake lever in another thread on this forum I ordered one. It has the advantage of a longer lever which yields more leverage and faster stopping. I got it yesterday and decided not to use it. The cables are attached to the lever in a way that doesn't allow them to pivot on their round barrel shaped ends. Instead the cable will be bent at the hole where it exits the lever each time the brakes are applied. This continual flexing of the cables where they emerge from the lever will cause accelerated fatigue and failure of the cables. I decided to use the original double cable lever lengthened the brake lever by epoxying on a piece of steel tube that just slipped over the brake lever after cutting off the turned up end. The new lever is about 6" long measured from the pivot bolt. It greatly reduced the grip effort needed to stop the bike. This lever system has the cables connected like most normal brake levers which don't bend the cable so the brake cable life should be a lot longer. I adjusted the brakes close to the rim so now if one cable breaks the lever will still operate the remaining brake so there's very little chance of losing both brakes at the same time. If anyone has one of these type combination brake and throttle units it would pay to take a careful look at the way they work.
 

BarelyAWake

New Member
Jul 21, 2009
7,194
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Maine
Hmm... I've not noticed such a problem with mine - have you set the cables & tension to be essentially a "60/40%" application? Despite the pivot for the cables inside the brake lever housing, the front one does seem to apply more tension (slightly longer travel) so I routed my front brake to it and adjusted the cable's tension to provide more braking power to the front as well.

As the front brake provides up to 80% of the stopping power, perhaps this is part of the difficulty you're having?

*general warning: As with a dual brake lever you've no individual brake control, setting it up in this fashion may be hazardous in slippery conditions.
 

exavid

New Member
Dec 12, 2009
163
0
0
Medford, OR
The attached picture shows where the cables come out of the lever handle, you can see why they are bent sharply each time you use the brakes. Admittedly you wouldn't be pulling the handle all the way in but nonetheless there's quite a bit of sharp angled flexing going on at that little hole where the cable emerges from the handle. I don't want to name the vendor who sells this unit because I've purchased other items from them that were very good, but I think this unit is a recipe for a serious problem. I just edited this post to show the double cable lever I'm now using. I had a problem with it because the brake pull took too much effort to brake the bike. There seemed to be two causes of this, one was the brake was located in front of the throttle control which made the short lever harder to use. The other was the lever itself was too short to comfortably pull two brakes with. I added a piece of steel tubing over the lever after cutting the turned up end of the lever. The piece of tubing is epoxy puttied on. I stuck a short carriage bolt with head diameter about the same as the tube in the outboard end to make it look more finished. I'll finish sanding down the epoxy and once the thing is painted it will look pretty good. The brakes are now easily operated and the stopping distance is about the same as it was before the engine was added.
 

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