I finally got my front brake lever in the mail yesterday, but when I went to put it on I realized that the curvature of the clip (middle piece in the first pic) was not wide enough to fit around my bars. The pictures that follow show how I was able to modify a few things to make this awesome vintage lever work for me.
1. The first picture shows how the brake lever and its components (lever, clip, and bolt) looked originally. The clip hooks into the slot in the brake lever and wraps around the back of the bars, connected underneath by the bolt. Everything is made of steel, which, luckily for me, can be reshaped pretty easily with the right tools.
2. In this picture you can see how the curvature of the clip has been flattened (and thus the length increased) so that it conforms to the diameter of the bars. I used a padded bench vise to do this. I also used a rattail file to lengthen the hole for the bolt so that I could get some extra clearance on the bottom. I then selected a longer, thinner sex bolt (courtesy of Sun Valley Bronze passage hardware) from my box-o-random parts, which just barely snuck under the bars. The unique aspect of a sex bolt is that it has a threaded tube-like nut (designed to connect two escutcheon plates on either side of a door.) I like how the nut gives the whole thing a very weird industrial look.
3. This is another view of the sex bolt, complete with random washers, from the underside. Basically what this whole operation proves is that: a) steel is no match for a flexible mind, and b) you should never throw away old door hardware just in case you ever need it for your bike.
No comments:
Post a Comment