Getting used to racing handlebars?

doozerie

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

You've just brought me back to the 1970's. I'd forgotten about those types. They were particularly useless when the metal became worn where they engaged with the regular levers.

My first "road bike" was in the 80's, and came with these brake extension levers fitted. Not that "cheap" and "rubbish" always went hand in hand, but it certainly did in this case. They were basically a standard part on basic/cheap bikes even then.

My one lingering memory of the shop where I bought that bike is seeing them re-centre brake callipers by holding a screwdriver against the calliper and belting the screwdriver handle with a hammer. Even with very little real bike-wrangling experience by then that approach just seemed wrong. You could get away with it with steel callipers, but it was one measure of how poorly designed the callipers were (I still recall the relief of my first half-decent callipers, they didn't go off-centre at the slightest provocation, and if they did they could be re-centred without a hammer - bliss!).

Those brake extension levers were invariably a loose/sloppy fit to start, which in itself would have been enough to make brake performance poor, like having a slack brake cable. But that combined with their attempt to move the primary brake lever from the top (= minimal leverage), plus rubbish callipers, made them particularly ineffective/rubbish. More like speed attenuators than brakes - mind you, that's something they had in common with some of the early designs of "proper" road brakes (I had a set of Campag brake calipers and brake-only levers from the 80's which were almost as awful, particularly with their stock "last forever"/hard as nails brake pads fitted).

On that first cheap road bike I replaced the stock rubbish brake levers + extensions with a much higher quality set, an early bit of bike tinkering on my part. The replacement ones were a much better design, nowhere near the same degree of slop in their fit to the primary brake lever body. I felt almost awesome, the one-eyed kid in the valley of the blind.

Despite being a massive improvement though, those "awesome" (= less sh1te) extension levers were still predictably inferior to the main levers. Plus I still recall getting my fingers pinned between the extension lever and the handlebars if I let the brake pads wear too much or let some slack develop in the brake cable over time. Steep learning curve - maintain your brakes or prepare for a fright when you really really need to use them.

Don't know why people call those extension brake levers "suicide levers" though. Clearly from a purely mechanical point of view they are not as effective as the primary brake levers, but I can say from personal experience that some of the conventional primary brake levers were rubbish too (not just due to the levers themselves, but also the callipers + their adjustment, choice of brake pad + their adjustment, etc.).

Mostly though I suspect that the worst examples of those brake extension levers were so bad due to poor bike maintenance as much as bad design of the levers - some people just don't know or care about bike maintenance and that is as true at the top end of bicycle price range where extension brake levers don't exist, as at the bottom end where they perhaps still appear as standard.

doozerie

Idleater wrote: »

The modulation was terrible, I wouldn't like to heavily use them.

Like vbrakes with non vbrake levers

One possibility here is that the pull ratio of those levers isn't well suited to your brakes (callipers?). Not unlike the challenge of finding a good match between modern drop-bar brake levers/brifters and cantilever brakes on CX bikes.

I've never had to install CX brake levers on a bike but I'd expect finding a good match would be part of the challenge. My daughter's bike came with CX levers fitted though, paired with canti's and low-end Shimano brifters, and both sets of brake levers seem to be similarly effective.

tomasrojo

doozerie wrote: »

Don't know why people call those extension brake levers "suicide levers" though. Clearly from a purely mechanical point of view they are not as effective as the primary brake levers, but I can say from personal experience that some of the conventional primary brake levers were rubbish too (not just due to the levers themselves, but also the callipers + their adjustment, choice of brake pad + their adjustment, etc.).

The Sheldon Brown link above mentions that the extension levers were marketed as "safety levers", so the nickname was trying to counteract that.

silverharp

was down to Glencree yesterday,went much better, used a kind of pistol grip for the brakes which worked better rather than using a full grip