Bicycle Mechanics - one lever-both brakes

I am going to build up a bike for a friend. He was born without a right arm. My question is does anyone have any ideas as to how to rig both brakes to work with one brake lever? Looking for something inexpensive.

Thanks,
gino

You could put two levers on one side and take it from there.

Yep! Contact all most any tandem bike shop. Tandems East in NJ is a good one.

A one time it was very popular to control the rear rim brake and the rear drag brake from one lever, levers for both drop and flat bars were made, so you should be able to find one for what ever set up you want.

Are you looking to control the front and rear brakes with one hand? It seems as though this could be a bit dangerous. I'm not sure of the idea that Bentbaggerlen suggested (I don't know anything about tandems), but I wonder if some kind of setup where your friend could control the front brake with his hand and the rear brake with his foot by backpedaling(such as in a coaster brake) would work better. Just thinking of ideas.


-Moab

OH! Someone made a brake control that fit to the bottom bracket. When you back pedal it would pull the brake cable. Can't rember who made it. Contact shops that sell speical use bikes, handcycles and the like. A good place to start would be http://www.angletechcycles.com/index.html I know they offer it on there Tri Speeder.

I had set up a bike with both brakes on one lever, for no other reason then I had a dual pull lever. Used it for 4 years. If you adjust the brakes properly it would not be dangerous at all.

i just sent you a link to Grimeca. They make a system that actuates both the front and rear calipers with one lever. The system 18 IBS moves all four pistons in the rear caliper and two up front. You could switch the line so it moves the front four and the rear two if you wanted. here is the link if any one else wants to check it out.

Grimeca Sys. 18IBS (http://www.grimeca.it/eng/freni/idraulici_s_18ibs.htm)

It is a pain to get the system but it might be worth it.

This is their US importer :

Vuelta (http://www.vuelta.it/)

Hope this helps out.

Slainte:beer:

Originally posted by gino
I am going to build up a bike for a friend. He was born without a right arm.
That's really cool, but... stoopid question, does he ride now? Riding exclusively with one hand is really tricky, especially in situations like hitting pot-holes or sudden stops. You bear down with the one hand and turn the bars. Faceplant.

Maybe a different handlebar setup altogether. Maybe there's an aerobar (http://www.profile-design.com/century.html) that's formed so he could easily ride with one hand in (or closer to) the middle? I dunno, good luck.
:thumbup:

Your friend seems an ideal candidate for a recumbent. These are much easier to brake, since you dont have to support your forward travelling mass with your arms, when your bike stops.
Tandems have dual braking with one lever, eg by Diacomp.

there was an article in our local paper a while ago about a teenager who is into road racing , he is a junior champ & he has only got one arm, he competes against able bodied riders ! the photo of his bike looked normal, but i wondered at the time about the brakes, gears, handeling ect, if you like i will make some enquires as to how his bike is set-up.:thumbup:

Before you start getting too technical-consider that th front brake does about 80% of the total braking, anyway. In fact, in a panic stop, the rear wheel unloads so much that the rear does nothing to stop the bike at all! Maybe you should just have the front brake do all the work, and have a small emergency lever near it for the rear, just in case a cable snaps. You might try having this as a bar-end style lever, and a regular lever for the front. Angle the bar-end lever downward, so it's not in the way. I've seen this setup done on a tandem.

BTW, I get along fine with just a front brake on my fixed gear/flipflop hub bike.

QBP, the distributor most bike shops purchase from, lists exactly what you are looking for in their catalog. It just happened to catch my attention in their catalog over the weekend because I am toying with a one-lever/both wheel system for one of my off the wall projects. I forget exactly what they called it, but it should be easy for your LBS to find it in the catalog.

I will assume that you need a solution for cable actuated brakes rather than hydraulic. Quality Bicycle Products distributes a brake cable splitter that retails for about $24 from your local bike shop. I have a customer who also happens to have only one good arm and he has this setup on both his mountain and his road bike. The only trick is to make sure that you tune the brakes very precisely - the rear brake must lockup before the front one does so that the rider does not endo. Besides that the whole setup is pretty easy. If your local bike shop cannot find the part let me know and I will get you a part number from QBP. Good Luck.

-Ryan

Originally posted by danka24
You could put two levers on one side and take it from there.

yeah that works dumb a** - he has ONE HAND on that ONE ARM

OK, here's the lever I was mentioning. With this lever on the end of the bar (angled downward, so that it's not in the way all the time), you could actuate the rear brakes for emergency stops, and use a regular lever for the front brake for most other stops. A well set-up front brake is all anybody need for stopping anyway, unless they are hauling lots of weight, descending very steep hills, or want to do brake slides.

The cable doubler is a Wishbone Cable Doubler, BR2796 in the 2002 QBP catalog.

if it were me i'd be tempted to just hook up the front brake. it's where 80 percent of your stopping power comes from.

Take a look into an Oddyssey Freestyle lever... they make ones with dual cables coming out of them...


you could always just put a really long cable into one insert of it.. and then a short one to the other side.

My friend runs em like that on his freestyle bike.. and it works pretty good.

:beer:

Pyramid products produces a handicap specific brake lever that activates both front and rear brakes, I can get them all day long for $8.

On the Santana tandem we had, years ago, one brake lever worked BOTH the front and rear cantilever brakes -- two cables coming out. The other lever worked the drum (drag) brake for controlling speed down hills.

There is no problem on a tandem with the bike flipping if the front wheel locked. It wouldn't happen. The pads would tend to wear evenly, too.

I would not try that set-up on a standard single bike. Might work on some recumbents.

Originally posted by sakarias
On the Santana tandem we had, years ago, one brake lever worked BOTH the front and rear cantilever brakes -- two cables coming out. The other lever worked the drum (drag) brake for controlling speed down hills.
I have the samee setup on my Moseman tandem. The brake levers are Dia-Comp aero levers. I've never taken the cables out myself, so I don't know how they are assembled. There are two cables that come out of the right-hand lever mount. Never had any problems locking the rear wheel on the tandem.

One of the brakes levers on our tandem had holes for two cable ends (Diacomp sounds familiar, must have been what we had, too). The other was a "normal" single hole brake lever. Our tandem was pre-aero brakes levers by quite a few years.

Howdy from Tucson, Gino!
Found a source and a real good price on the double pull brake lever you are looking for!
Diacompe Dual Control 204T lever, with cable and housing (non-aero) for $25 at info@tandemsltd.com (Tandems Ltd. is in Georgia, owners Jack & Susan Goertz). Cables alone are ususally 12 bucks!
Tell 'em Rudy & Kay from Tucson say "howdy!"
Rudy & Kay/Zona tandem

The dual cabling issue has been addressed. As one of our BF regulars has mentioned in his posts, he has to control everything from the right because of nerve damage. I believe he uses STI, a cable yoke, and a barcon.

I like the recumbent suggestion, although mountain bars might make an upright OK. When I worked at Bikecology, we had a one-armed customer who rode a standard Benotto road bike with a dual-pull brake lever, and another who used the rear brake only, despite my best diplomatic efforts at physics education. "One-armed Willie" Stewart is often seen on the California triathlon circuit.

If your friend has a useful partial right arm, can he perhaps get a prothesis which would enable him to lean evenly on the handlebars?

Recumbent steering is a lot (lot!) more squirrelly than
an uprite. It took me a few hundred miles to reduce the side to side wobble of my bent from +/- 3ft to +/- 0.5 ft. It is essentially impossible except for a few bents and a very few riders to ride a bent hand free. Riding my bent even now after 9000mi with one hand doubles the side to side wobble. Dual brake handles as for tandems ignore the obvious question of how is he going to shift, and what will he shift. The only way you can use a R hand controller on
the L side is to use a flat bar and Sram type twist grip
"upside down". An STI type will run the cable the wrong
way resulting in a really strange cable run. Barcons
are ambidextrous of course. Steve

sch, What recumbent do you ride?

Len I ride a Rotator Pursuit Ti
Steve

yeah that works dumb a** - he has ONE HAND on that ONE ARM

No I´ve seen that set up working and there is no problem using either or both levers , the troubles arise from torque reaction : all your weight on one side of the bar means problems -- mind I´ve seen people ride like this with one arm and only one leg so it can be done , but it ain´t easy , not no way .

Didn't read too closely so someone might have said it allready. Magura hs33 rim brakes could be run with 2 caliper pairs and one leaver. The only problem would be you would have to run the pads really close to the rims as there is now twice as much piston area in the calipers. A proberble advantage or perhaps disadvantage would be there would be the same ammount of force on all 4 pads even as the pads wear.

If I was riding with only one arm I wouldn't bother with a rear brake at all. I can't think of many situations where you need both a front and rear brake with out indepentant control of both brakes.

Wow! Long dry spell there. I finished the bike for my buddy last spring. Used the handicap brake lever ($10 or so), SRAM shifter for rear shifting (mounted upside down) and an old Suntour thumb shifter mounted on a barend for front shifting. He's been riding the bike for almost a year now with no problems.
gino :D

If anyone is looking for alternative solutions (operating two brakes with one lever, also operating one brake with two levers), try:

http://www.problemsolversbike.com/products.html