This question may have been posed before, but if it has, I can’t seem to find it.
I have a Nimbus II 26" MUni with a double-wide rim and 3" tire. I want to put a brake on it, but I have no idea what hardware I need. I’ve done tons of searches, looked at bunches of pictures, looked at the hardware on unicycle.com and I just can’t seem to figure it out.
I would prefer not to have to braze on the posts, as I don’t have access to welding equipment.
Also, is it possible to use a bicycle v-brake/cantilever-brake with a double-wide rim?
If someone could tell me what the most inexpensive and/or easiest way to do this would be, I sure would appreciate it.
if you don’t want to weld then you’ll need a new frame, very few manafactureres do 26" anymore, i think KOXX (and possibly Qu-Ax) are your only options.
yes you can use V-brakes, althought there are issues with clearing the cross cable on very large tyres, need to get a set-up with long arms. Cantilevers are just crap, never seen them used on a uni.
What you would want is something like this but I am not sure if you can fit a 3" tire in there or if the break itself would be able to clear the top of the tire.
I’d say try to find someone who welds. Ask around, maybe a friend of a friend.
I asked my LBS about the V-brakes and they didn’t think it would clear a 3" tire, and refused to speculate at what the widest tire would be. They basically said I’d have to get the parts and try it at my expense.
I put a 2.4" tire on my MTB and although it was close to the cables, I think I probably could have fit a 2.5". Keep in mind the Nimbus’ wider rim would make the tire effectively not as tall as on most MTB rims, and I’m pretty sure there are longer V-brake levers than what were on my Specialized.
After a bit more thought I now really don’t think that you can use regular V-breaks with a 3" tire. The tire almost rubs the crossover cable on my bike with a 2.6 on the back. If you could find a set of breaks with a really long arm and a long pull lever you could pull it off but with the expense it would probably make more sense to just go with a Magura setup.
I think there are long arm V breaks on the Xtracycle website but they were really expensive if I remember right.
Thanks a lot for the input, guys. It looks like I’ll probably have to go with trying to find someone to braze the mounts on and attach a Magura brake set. I really love my 26", so swapping the frame isn’t an option.
You can put v-brakes on a 26x3, as long as the mounts are set quite high up. However, it still requires brazing, and v-brakes don’t cost much different to maguras. For an out and out muni maguras probably make sense, I like v-brakes for touring as spares are easy to get & light to carry, but munis it’s less important, and maguras are nice and easy to set up.
Setting up the magura braze on mounts for welding is easy. First you work out where they will go, and file off the chrome under where the tabs will go. Then you need to clamp them on using hose clamps (I used hose clamps with blocks of wood on the outside on the frame), make sure they’re in the right place (there are specifications for where to put them on the magura website). Make really really sure they’re in the right place and the hose clamps are tight enough so the mounts can’t move around. Also make sure the clamps are nowhere near the tabs on the magura mounts. Then take them to any place that can weld (any local metal shop / engineering company - we have four or five in our yellow pages in a small town, there probably is one near you), and ask them to weld them on. At mine, it cost me £4 to get it done. The welding on itself only takes about 5 minutes (plus 5 minutes to let it cool), the reason bike shops charge a fair amount is because the setup takes time, if you do the setup there’s not much work left.
Mine, I got it welded, just because the first person I went to did welding and not brazing, I don’t think it makes masses of difference as long as the person welding has some skill, the only hassle is that if you get the setup wrong, welding is permanent and can’t be undone, whereas I think brazing can be. But you’re only risking a £20 nimbus II frame anyway.
If you don’t want any hassle and have lots of money, unicycle.com would almost certainly be able to get you a nimbus II frame with magura braze ons, I know the UK one has got a few done, I didn’t do it that way because it was cheaper and quicker to do my existing frame.
One of my teammates (I’m a downhill MTB racer) is a mountain bike manufacturer. He owns Aztech Bike Frames. He agreed to braze it on for me for some beer. And one of the guys I ride MTB with gave me an HS33 that he removed when he got his disc brakes. So it cost me the mount kit and some beer to acquire a brakeset and get it professionally welded… sweet.
I’ll post it up in the “Post your uni’s” section when he gets it done.
I don’t know what kind of uni you have, but after seeing how well the Maguras grip and how they mount, I have to agree with the other guys on here about not mounting v-brakes to a MUni.
Like I said in the above post, I’ll take some detailed pics of the finished product and post 'em up.
