front brake for track/road fixed

hangsheadinshame

Hi,
I have a track bike that I have fitted a drilled front fork to. What do peeps use for a front brake and brake lever?

I don't want to have to faf taking of break hoods and all that when it is time to go to the track. I have seen some fixed gear bikes set up with what look like little mountain bike levers so that all it would take is two secondswith an alun key to be track legal. Any recommendations? I'm running Planet-X OS superlight bars if that makes a difference (they are fat at the top)

Cheers

NorwegianBlue

Cyclocross inline levers are the ones you're thinking of.

Personally I don't like them as I ride on the drops all the time so getting to the brakes in an emergency takes too long. As a solution to this I used to run a reverse action bar end time trial/triathon type lever on my Langster.

A friend of mine who uses his road fixer to train on the track has a better solution, a traditional lever on the right and a dummy on the left on one set of bars and another set of bars without levers. This allows him to run deeper drops on the track than he does on the road. Two allen bolts to unclamp the bars from the stem, one to remove the caliper and then two to clamp in the other bars. Under five minutes work.

hangsheadinshame

Hey that is great. Three perfectly good solutions. I like the tt lever in the end of the drops approach. Never even thought of it before.

Thanks again

peejay78

one of these?



combined with 105, all the stopping power you could need.

hangsheadinshame

yeah! like that. Diatech Gold Finger is it?

peejay78

that's the beast.

awesome.

great for riding on the bars, you can cover it really comfortably with your hands. stupidly easy to take off.

AndyGates

I have two entirely separate heads: a brakeless Pista bar and a moustache bar with brakes. Undo the stem bolt and the brake bolt and the whole assembly comes off. Piece of cake.

hangsheadinshame

I quite like that one as I can have three bar set ups. Road, track and TT

hangsheadinshame

One more question...those "inline" cross levers that you can get: do you have to run them in series with another brake lever or can they be the sole lever ? I like the look of the tektro cross lever as a sole lever for road set up.

Cheers

Russell

Monty Dog

Although designed for in-line use, secondary levers work fine on their own with an MTB/barrel cable end - a normal road cable just pulls through unless you can find some sort of nipple/seat

sevenofeleven

here's my anchor! [/img]

hangsheadinshame

Show off!! Seriously beautiful brake but awful, awful, awful pedals. Are you scared of something?

NorwegianBlue

Pretty it might be, but not as effective as even a cheap dual pivot.

sevenofeleven

those pedals are 10 year old Shimano "KerbKrunchers" they come in handy for dispensing justice to car drivers who park right in front of my bike bin! I found that my Mk 5 delta was effective enough in stopping me on a 45 mph descent in the wet on the Joux- Plane!

NorwegianBlue

I never said they didn't work, but the fact remains that dual pivots are more effective.

timbooth

NorwegianBlue wrote:

I never said they didn't work, but the fact remains that dual pivots are more effective.

A stick in the spokes is more effective too, but it doesn't look as nice either!!

NorwegianBlue

TimBooth wrote:

NorwegianBlue wrote:

I never said they didn't work, but the fact remains that dual pivots are more effective.

A stick in the spokes is more effective too, but it doesn't look as nice either!!

A good point well made.