ianbrettcooper

I keep hearing that it makes it super hard to use the hoods. I never found it hard - the crook of the thumb rests right over (or in front of) the button on the extension lever - there's no discomfort. The point of extension levers is to offer options to modify speed while at any hand position. I use them a lot and I probably spend 75% of my time in the drops.

Different bars don't give the freedom of movement that drops do. They just don't.

Knowing what I do now about interrupter levers, I will never buy another set of them if I can get a set of extension levers. My problem, though, is that I love brifters. I don't think there's a brifter on the market that can be modded to accept extension levers, so I have to resign myself to bar end shifters (which I think are ugly) or downtube or stem shifters.

thook

Haha! Now, that's my style.


I think part of the arguments made here don't really follow the original post. As far as I can tell, he said the extension were good for speed trimming........not as a substitute for strong braking. Nevertheless, I've ridden bikes with them adjusted well and they did stop the bike. Mind you, they weren't loaded touring bikes, either.

When you are just casually riding, I think they work pretty good. If your not travelling very fast, always dropping down to grab the brakes gets tiresome if you just want to stay on the tops while cruising.

Edit: Looks like you posted before me. Ha! Oh well....a little redundancy never hurts.

ianbrettcooper

There are no POS bikes - there are only cyclists who don't appreciate them. There's a reason low-end steel Schwinns and Raleighs are still around today, and it's not because they are POS: it's because they were built to last because minimum wage-earners didn't have the money to be buying a new bike every time the industry changed its frame colour schemes.

So have some respect.

thook

Where did you get fenders in that color???!! Or, did you paint them that color? Love the color combination, btw.

StanSeven

Actually the wire in the cable doesn't stretch. What happens is the soft "plastic" type tube or covering over the wire wears away giving the wire cable more slack.

As far as extension levers, they are evil for all the reasons mentioned. Really, one can move their hands from any position (middle/top of bars, hoods, drops) to regular brakes as fast as extension levers and they work better without the extra space used by the levers.

ianbrettcooper

Yes, that's true - IF YOU WANT TO BRAKE. Why is it only a few people have understood my point?

What if you don't need to brake? What if you're going 30mph, you've changed from the drops because you needed to shift position for a bit of a rest and you want to slow down a bit - no danger, no stop coming up - you just want to bleed off some speed? Or you're tootling along on the bar tops at 8mph and you do have to stop, but you have plenty of time to just stop slowly and gently - and you don't want to have to change position to do it? What if you find this need happening a lot during longer rides? Wouldn't it be nice - as an option - if you wanted it - to accomplish that from the bar top?

Extra space? What extra space? Is it being used for anything? Not on any bike I've owned. Next folks will be telling me their weight is unbearable, or that the glare from them is distracting. I mean how many excuses can people come up with?

Anyone would think I just passed a law mandating their use, LOL. Yet all I'm doing is saying that they do have a valid use, that criticism of them is popular, yet in large part unwarranted, and that I think Sheldon Brown is wrong in outright criticizing them because his reasons don't hold much water.

mazdaspeed

Put a few thousand miles a a year on one and tell me you couldn't appreciate a better bike. There's a reason these bikes are worth $50 still while vintage lightweights are worth hundreds and thousands

ianbrettcooper

Sounds like you've never been fresh out of high school and working a minimum wage job for a few months without transportation. If you had, and if you had compared a second-hand bike boom Raleigh that costs $50 with a lightweight bike that costs several hundred, you'd know which was the more valuable bike. The Raleigh is infinitely better because you can own it and ride it! The other one stays at the shop and is completely useless.

People with money simply don't understand that people without money have different values. To a person on a budget, the bike that's worth less is the better bike by far. It may not be as comfortable as a handmade bike fitted to the owner, but that bike is a pipe dream to most people. It's a fantasy that can never be reality. A $50 bike is never a POS to a person who buys it, and I find it offensive when people suggest that inexpensive bikes are "****". Someone worked hard to make that "POS" - probably earning whatever they pay as minimum wage in China. I don't care how heavy it is or how poor the welding is, or what components it has, if people work 8 hours a day in a factory to make it, and if it gets people around, it's not a piece of ****!

mazdaspeed

This is a bunch of crap. I've paid my way through college and worked/saved for all of my bikes. My first 'real' road bike was a 1986 team fuji with suntour sprint that I paid $100 for and it was MUCH better than some low end varsity-ish bike in every possible way including durability. None of my lightweights have EVER been in the shop, in fact, the reasons I know how to work on bikes to begin with is because I couldn't afford to have a shop do anything to them. If you care about bikes enough there's no reason to settle for a bike boom piece of crap when you can eventually find a decent bike for the same price.

ianbrettcooper

What are you, a professional scatologist? Is that what you worked your way through college to become?

Look, you may have bought a Team Fuji for $100 and you may have worked your way through college, but your attitude screams 'rich kid who has never had to work for a living'. Let's put it this way - lots of rich kids work their way through college. I doubt you ever had to work a minimum wage job to pay rent. If you had, you wouldn't be calling a low-end bike boom bike a "piece of crap".

I despise people who show disrespect for bikes that don't meet their high standards. A true cyclist finds worth in any bicycle.

mazdaspeed

Not everyone views bikes simply as a mode of transportation. If that were the case everyone would be fine with a 50lb mountain bike. You're posting on a cycling forum that is full of cycling enthusiasts, consider this. I value cycling highly enough that I am willing to cut back on other things in order to afford a nicer bike.

Funny that you think I'm a 'rich kid' just because I appreciate nice bikes though

tiger1964 

Wow, I guess things have changed over the years; last night I was giving the "loaner bike" for my wife a once-over, unscrewed the suicide levers expecting the barrels to have a protrusion beyond the lever housing -- but they didn't! Design changed, with the SL's off they are flush, all I need are hoods now. Yippee! She thinks the bike looks less POS now, her words not mine, and is ready to give it a trial commute.

bbattle

Getting back to extension levers, it seems everyone agrees they aren't as effective as the regular brake levers. And that they appeared during the Bike Boom of the early 70's. Primarily to help Americans used to cruiser bike handlebars with the upright geometry. Riding like Eddy Merckx just wasn't as much fun as it looked. Rare to find extension levers on a high end bike but it has happened.

Nowadays, there are interrupter levers that work so much better, even the SS/FG crowd loves them.

I fixed up a Raleigh Gran Prix and removed the levers. When I sold the bike, the girl wanted the levers so I put them back on. For her city riding needs, they'll be fine.

I used to ride my stepmother's Montgomery Ward 5-speed as a kid. I thought it was cool to be riding the "Big Bike". Trying to stop that bike on a descent with extension levers and steel rims was a nightmare that kept me off hills until I was big enough to use the real brake levers. Years later, I rode that bike while in college. I never locked it. Somebody finally stole it after it sat for two days in front of the science building. I had a nice laugh over it. Six months later, I spy the bike in the lobby of a dorm. Repainted and all fixed up. I left a note on it: "What a lovely bike. Where ever did you find it?" That bike disappeared the next day. I was glad somebody else appreciated it; I didn't consider it worth more than 10 bucks at the time.

Thumpic

People ask me about them all the time.....if you like them use them...... Panic stops don't happen too often and it's too late then to find out that the extensions will not stop you fast enough. I know how to set up brakes; true wheels, replace pads, etc. I've never seen a set up with extensions that provided more than 60% of the available brake force.

my 2 cents..

Sixty Fiver

Interrupter levers ftw.... if you can't modulate them your set up is wrong or you need to improve your bike handling skills.

Big problem with suicide levers is that people who use them often think they are effective brakes... if you understand that they are speed attenuators and have the reflexes and skill to shift your hands to the real lever in an emergency stop then go for it.

With modern interrupter levers you get the same braking from the top as you do from the drops.

AngelGendy

Can't we all just get along?

late

I had extension levers on my Varsity back in the 70s... I liked them, now my bikes
have those cyclocross brakes. Same idea, just better.

Nothing against the old school, but all my bikes are going to have cross brakes.
So if I picked up an old bike, that would be part of the update process.

ianbrettcooper

Yeah, like being in top physical condition is the be-all and end-all of cycling.

robatsu

Well, like most people around my age (51), I used these as a teenager w/out much introspection. Then, growing older and becoming a connoisseur at the knee of Sheldon-like types, I learned to disdain them and then forgot about the issue for 2 decades, as I wouldn't even consider riding a bike w/turkey wings as a matter of principle.

Then, growing even older and getting broadening my scope of vintage interests from snobby italian stuff, this turkey wing stuff bobbed to the surface again. My initial (re)impression was they were fun for bopping around the neighborhood. That still stands. Being able to brake from more places on the bars is objectively (in principle) a *good thing*. Whether it encourages people to buy bikes that have bad adjustments for them is a level of social engineering that is well beyond the ability of mechanical engineering to resolve.

The part that gets me, and I've got advanced degrees in mech and nuclear engineering, is the implementation of turkey wings. Basically, you've got one stick pushing another stick, which introduces a lot of play and the necessity for very precise adjustment. If the typical turkey wing implementation were such that the wings actuated the same axis as the primary lever rather than merely pushing the primary lever, I think that this whole decades long argument about turkey wings would never have happened. Had this been the case, they would have been as non-controversial as interrupter levers.

mazdaspeed

So you like cycling and bikes, but don't care about being in shape, or bikes? Lol...

ianbrettcooper

Why is it that people feel the need to call into question my ability to ride simply because I give reasons for preferring extension levers. Heck, I could say the same thing about those who don't like extension levers: maybe your bike skills aren't elite enough to be able to adjust or use them effectively. LOL.

Interrupter brakes are very efficient brake levers. But no matter how skilled one is in adjusting or using them, they cannot be adjusted to give the same soft braking for modulating excess speed that an extension lever gives. Interrupters are brakes - they are not brake extensions.

It's like cantilever brakes. They are extremely efficient brakes for mountain biking and if the user is a road cyclist and is using them for the first time they can easily put him/her on the ground faster than you can say 'spit'. They just are not as good at soft braking for slowing down. They can do it, if the user has a very light touch - but they're not great at it because they're designed to be great at quick stops.

riva

I like the turkey levers.. and stem shifters and reflectors. I think half the reason I like them is because they are so hated. The other half cause I grew up with them. Never had a problem with them, you figure out pretty quickly what they can do. And I'm with ian, a POS magna is a good bike to somebody who needs what it offers. Naturally most BF members would never go near one, but that aint the point is it.

robatsu

Dude, I 'm going to give you a stock answer that I don't totally agree with, but see the logic of as presented from a hardcore cyclist perspective.

The basic deal in any go-fast culture, whether motorcycles, cars, bikes, is that to go fast, you have to be able to stop fast. Trust me on this. If you don't, look it up.

So, turkey wings as implemented over the past 30 years are substandard brakes in general. Occasionally they can be made to work well, but in general they are sub-standard.

Hence, anyone who thinks that these things are adequate brakes is not riding to the level of people for whom these type of brake levers are inadequate.

Now, that all being said, I don't necessarily agree with this chapter and verse. I am just answering your question about why people think you are a Fred and have limited cycling abilities because you like turkey wings.

Al Criner

I have an old set of Shimano Z-series brakes and levers, including the turkey wings. If anybody wants them, PM me. One of the levers is scuffed, but they came off of a 1985 Ross Gran Tour, so you could just think of the scuffs as part of their vintage patina.

Actually, as some of the posters have said, for low-speed casual riding they work fine, which is why low-end bikes had them.

shipwreck

https://cgi.ebay.com/NOS-Shimano-Exag...item5ae026dc3f

These are kind of interesting. Areo extensions. I actualy thought about getting these a while ago when I first saw them.

To the op, is this really worth getting exited about? I like them, and use them, but am not that much of an enthusiast(tho thinking about it, a jersey with turkey levers all over it would be pretty cool).

I mean, I like pie plates and use them on some of my bikes. And whenever they come up in a thread, I just let it go.

Look at it this way. Most of these guys won't be using them, so more for those who do. I may be the only poster who has Voluntarily put them on a bike, and even I have a box of them.