Gruffy

Hi all,

Long time lurker - first time poster and seeker of advice! Please be nice!

I've just dipped my toes into bike restoration, buying a fixer-upper 80's Peugeot race bike - nothing fancy, just a fairly common entry level bike that I thought I would cut my classic bike teeth on! A big project to me, but no doubt a doddle to the old timers on here.

Anyways, down to it - I'm trying to re-wrap the bars and have read up/watched various vids. This bike has interrupter levers that run off the side of the front brake levers and as such they get in the way if I try to fold back the rubber brake hoods. What's the best way to get round this, do you usually have to remove the brake levers althogher? Most of the instructions I've seen down have these sort of brakes.

Thank you!

Grand Bois

I don't think you are talking about interrupter levers.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=...19&FORM=IQFRBA

Gruffy

Ah my bad - showing my naivety with this style of bike!

Possibly I mean turkey levers(?) like so:


So on the inside of the horizontal brake I can't figure out how to fold the hoods back.

himespau 

Are the Turkey wings removable? On some styles of brake they are and others they're not. If they are, you might be able to do it that way. The thing is on some, they technically ARE removable, but when you do it screws the innards up and I don't remember which those are. Perhaps someone will be along to clear up my hazy memory.

Gruffy

They don't appear to be (at least easily) removable, there is a rivet type fixing running through from the outside edge of the front lever to the inside of the turkey wing.

The turkey wings are located into the front lever via a small lug attached the turkey wing, I did wonder about trying to pop this out of position so that it could be twisted out of the way, but the lug is quite long and it doesn't feel comfortable to force the lever out this far.

Metacortex

Technically they were known as Safety Levers, however colloquially they were also called suicide levers or turkey wings. There was recently a thread on how to install hoods on brakes with safety levers here: https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ty-quot-Levers

Gruffy

Thanks Metacortex - I don't think this exactly solves my problem though. They're discussing how to mod hoods to fit over turkey levers. I already have the hood, just can't work out how to pull it back to tape the bars as the safety lever gets in the way.

Metacortex

Sorry, I guess I didn't understand the original question. I normally take off the safety levers when wrapping bars.

Gruffy

No probs - thanks for your assistance. I guess ideally this is what I need to do, but task one appears to have become a right pain in the ass, looks like the safety breaks are riveted on! Doh!

cbresciani

You might be able to undo your brake cables which may let the brake levers flop down which in turn may give you enough room to fold up the hood to wrap your bars.

himespau 

I wonder why they were riveted. Most of the ones I've seen use a screw (in a sheath) as the pivot point. You just unscrew that and are good to go. Rivets, make it much more difficult.

puchfinnland

hey.
I know those turkey levers and they are quite good ones- they are attached to the pivot pin-they wont come off without removing the whole lever assembly

first things first.

what type of tape are you going to use?

if it is not so soft, you could use this method

remove all old tape,

put some masking tape to hold the back of the lever strap to the bars,

use the allan key and completly remove the levers except the strap, put a m5 screw temporary in the strap to hold it in the correct location to the bars,

wrap your bars- then reinstall your levers on top of the tape.

it will look great, I just did some levers this method.

Gruffy

This is a really good idea, I'll give this a go! Thanks

Gruffy

Hi again everybody,

Just a quick message to say thanks for the advice yesterday and the warm welcome to the forums.

To let you all know I managed to successfully wrap the bars this evening without total deconstruction of the brakes. The tape I had I think would have been too thick to sit under the brake assembly without causing problems. So with the help of a friend and some brute force we managed to hold the rubber hoods back just enough that I could wrap the bars and push the edges of the tape up underneath the hoods with a flat blade screwdriver where necessary. It was tricky but has worked well, and my bike looks a million times better now!

I've just found out my brother has sand-blasting equipment at his work - now the fun really begins! Rusty bits watch out!