Hey everyone. I am currently building up a road bike. I am wanting to use only bullhorn handlebars with bar end shifters. But I am also wanting to mount brake levers pretty close to the end of the bars as well. Is there any sort of clamp on reverse brake lever? I have seen some brake levers that clamp on but it looks like the cable goes out the opposite direction of the bike, which wouldn't allow me to keep the cables under the grip tape. And I don't want to just put the lever on backwards.

I have attached a photo I found on the internet for the type of thing I am going for. I just don't know what kind of brake lever that is.

Does anybody have any ideas on how I could set something like this up?

The lever in your picture is often referred to as a cross or bar top lever. It's made as an interrupter to be used in-line with standard brake levers, so you can brake from the tops of your bars. People use them solo on fixed gear / single speed bikes. Not sure how well it would serve your purposes, as the reach is quite large to be mounted under your bullhorns and still be easy to grab with your hand in the opposite direction.

You can make the cross lever work on bullhorns. It looks a little odd due to the spacer used to reduce the reach, but functions fine.

Check out the attached pics. You could just remove the bar end plug and pop a bar end shifter in there; hopefully you would be able to fit the shifter housing through the gap in the brake clamp.

Thanks for that info. Pretty much what I want to do is have both bar end shifters and bar end brakes on bullhorn bars while being able to cleanly keep most the the cables under the bar tape.

Could I simply get a pair of reverse brake levers, remove the plugs, fit the bar end shifters into the brakes and put that into the bar? Is this what you are saying sfclearwater?

I don't think you've got enough length on the part that attaches the shifter to the bar to do as you suggested above. You'll want to put the brake on the bar and then the shifter into the end of the bar. I think that sfclearwater was referring only to running the shifter cable through the base of the brake. Likely, you could run the shifter cable next to the brake and then under the bar tape, but the brake and shifter would have to be misaligned by a few degrees to get that to work.

The brake levers are sized to fit onto the bar, not onto the stub of the shifter. So you need to mount them as shown and then have the bar ends come out of the end. It'll still look clean though.

And after the thread a while back about the cable fatiging and snapping I like the little extenders that sfclear' used. It puts the ball end up and away from the stress point and lets the cable flex more naturally where it leaves the lever. I'd still be checking often for a broken strand though.