After looking at options that have been talked about on the forum I think I have come up with a simple way to get the lever firmly in place, and it took about 15 minutes of work with some spare stuff laying around.
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Cut off end of an old seatpost, 7/8"
1" angle iron
2 1/2" bolt with a couple of washers and a Nylock nut 1/4"x20tpi
In the angle I drilled two 1/4" holes on 35mm centers to match the front most holes on the KH seat. Then I drilled another hole between them on the other side of the angle. I used a pipe cutter to cut a piece of old seatpost to a length that would allow for the thickness of the washers, nylock nut, and angle. I cut the angle just a little past the mounting holes. I put the bolt through a washer and the chunk of seatpost and screwed it tightly together through the angle. I then mounted the whole thing to my seat and the lever is secure.
In truth, it took longer to put up this post than it did to mount a brake lever to my uni.
Nice! Very simple. End result is very similar to the brake mount on the new Cokers, but I don’t know if that one is available as a separate part you can buy…
After looking through the posts, and searching for anything related to mounting a brake lever I was a little surprised to find almost nothing. There are a lot of posts telling people which great product to buy, and a couple that mention a clever fix with a pipe clamp or such. I couldn’t find any with pictures or instructions, so I decided to put my rig out there for anyone who might find it useful.
I have a friend who welds, and I might have him weld it so I can lose the bolt.
That’s neat - it looks like a cheap way to get almost exactly the same as the £7.50 KH brake mount. Is it bendy at all with only two bolts attached? The KH / Koxx ones attach to all four bolts at the front.
Looks like pretty much exactly the same place as the KH mount.
The extender /spooner things aren’t about reach - you can easily set up a brake lever to be reachable on the KH mounts - they’re about fine control of braking, by providing an extra large surface to hold onto.
Very neat, and it has an advantage.
I remember KH posting that he never tightened his brake lever fully as this would then allow it to rotate when he UPD’d rather than damaging the lever.
This set up allows for that without the need to leave a bit of slack in the lever clamp. Tighten everything up and the small bit of bar will still rotate if the lever gets smacked on the side.
I realise that this was probably an intentional part of the original design!!
I was going to say why go to all that effort when you can just put a bar-end on the seatpost, but I suppose that isn’t an option anymore with newer frames that use thicker seatposts…
Like Joe, I wonder about the bendiness of the mount with only two bolts, but if it’s too bendy it’d be easy enough to make another bracket to use all four bolts.
It’s very stiff. I was a bit surprised. I expected at least as much flex as the seat handle, but it seems less so. I mounted to the front bolts with the angle to the front in the hopes that it would minimize flex, but I don’t even know if it would matter that much.
My real motivator in making this was that I have a hard time spending almost $20 before shipping on something that looks easy enough to make. On top of that I had a bunch of random hardware sitting around, and so i thought what can I make out of this stuff.
Another advantage over the KH version might be the ability to move or adjust the position of your magura lever after it’s installed on the seat. The mag on my MUni has the mounting bolt facing the seat base, so it needs to be in just the right position before mounting the seat. This version can be loosened to rotate the lever with a scredriver and a 11mm box end wrench.
Anyway I’m sure that the KH mount is lighter, and that could be a deal breaker for anyone who cares about a little extra weight.
Ouch, didn’t know they were that expensive. I forgot to say that I like the result of your brake mount - the only thing I was worried about was the stiffness, and apparently that isn’t a problem.
joemarshall - thanks for the clarification. I’m not very experienced with brakes on unicycles, but I do plan to mount a Magura hydraulic brake on my new road killer when it is finished. However, I think I’ll make a custom handle where I can have the lever instead of underneath the seat.
This is a great idea for a lot of things. I have been trying to come up with a way to mount a petzl light under the seat. Im also going to investigate the use of bar ends on the seat post.
If I had a 22.2 seatpost I would have gone with a bar end. I have a bunch of different ones laying around. My uni has a 25.4 seatpost, and so a bar end wouldn’t work. Torker makes a brake lever mount that looks like an over grown bar end made to fit 25.4, but it’s $10-$12. The one I made puts the lever in a nice spot, and cost me nothing more than what I had laying around anyway.
