I made an adapter for free:
corbin
While adapters like these are indeed clever and inexpensive the bigger question for me is how to mount non-Magura brakes on a frame that doesn’t even have Magura mounting brackets. Some people have drilled holes in different places but I’ve yet to see a really good example that I can follow, or if it’s worth it. Please enlighten me!
I used a DNA “big cheese” v adaptor to put them onto my Nimbus 29’er: My 29er
I later drilled a hole in the crown and ditched the hose clamps, but it worked very well either way.
There are several ways to do this – but it depends on your skillset, tools available, and what unicycle you have. On Jason (maestro’s) muni, we brazed Magura mounts to his frame. On my Nimbus 36, I welded a bracket to the back and drilled a hole through it. On my KH36, for a while I ran a regular kids brake on it with a hole through the seat post tube.
What unicycle do you have? What brake do you want to run on it? I can offer advice, but I need to know what you have.
corbin
It depends on the brand of v-brake. I was putting v’s on my coker big 1, it already has the mounts. I had a few sets of xtr v-brakes sitting around and thought it would be cool to put those on… The arms stuck out way too much, I was bummed. Then I tried a cheapo pair of avid brakes, they don’t stick out at all past the frame, even with 1/4 inch of space between the pads and rim.
If the arms on your V-brake are sticking out too much there is usually some spacers between the brake arm and the pads that you can remove to get the arms a bit closer in.
Corbin,
When you say “brazed” do you mean it rather than welding? Brazing is much easier and the cost for the torch is < $20. If I could get by with brazing rather than welding, I would modify my old frame.
I was thinking of getting braze on mounts for a 29" Nimbus frame.
Scott
Hey Scott – yes, it is brazing, and it is easier than welding, but I do use an oxy-acet torch setup to do it (they cost a few hundred, or cheaper on craigslist if you can find a used one). I’m not sure if a small torch puts out enough heat. Magura (and UDC) sells “braze on” brake mounts. They are fairly easy to braze on to a frame. I use a brass/bronze filler metal and the torch. However, if you haven’t ever brazed before you should practice doing some butt-braze “welds” first. Also get some brazing flux (the paste kind is the best).
corbin
I’ve done brazing with MAPP gas. As long as you aren’t at too high an altitude you should be fine with it. At the bike shop we used to use an oxy-mapp rig to do braze ons. The jig we had looked a lot like the homemade one on Sheldon Brown’s page.
I’ve used hard silver filler with success, but you have to have very tight miter’s for it to work as it doesn’t fill gaps very well.
Another non-brazing option would be to find a pair of Moots Mounts. I don’t think they’ve been made for a few years, but they got popular in the mid-school bmx crowd when u-brakes started showing up on bmx’s. And I’ve seen them pop up occasionally on Ebay, and even craigslist.
They work great on my KH29 - I used some adapters that I found online (Echo brand).
I loved it.
Thanks for sharing.
Keep up the good work.
v-brake on 29er
This is how I did it. I bought the little aluminum spacers and put them over the magura mount threads.
Carey
Since you’re asking about MUni and not 36er, you should note that most V-brakes won’t fit over most MUni tires. Cantilevers could, theoretically, but they also stick out to the sides and would seem to cause problems for your legs. You’d also have to find a way to suspend the pull cable.
I got a friend with welding equipment to add some cantilever brake posts to my steel Nimbus Muni frame:
Like tholub points out most V-brakes will not clear the larger Muni-tires. This was the case with my 3" Duro and therefore I went with cantilevers. The fact that they stick slightly out beyond the frame has not been a problem so far even though I was a bit skeptical at first.
The wire goes up to the saddle, makes a U-turn at the back of the saddle (lightly held in place by a small piece of zip-tie) and ends up at the handle. The relatively tight bend does slow the cable movement somewhat, but when braking I pull extra hard on the handle anyway…
slick cable routing! do the canti’s clip your heels?
V Brakes on Muni
They work fine if you have the correct adaptor from Magura to v-brake.
See my linked post bellow. I have also posted somewhere homemade adaptors that worked better for muni. If you search for Unicorn and brakes you should be able to find more posts and picture by me.
Unicorn
Nope - it´s a 26inch frame and I use 140mm cranks. The brake arms hide in the arch behind my knees and are therefore out of the way. The only thing they might hit during normal use is a rock or something similar in a particularly unfortunate UPD.
The cable routing did come out pretty slick. I was worried that the cable might saw its way through the lower seatpost clamp bolt but it has not been a problem yet.
very nice. It would take years to wear through your bolt, but if there’s enough metal you could drill a hole through it to run the cable and recess the housing end as well. The way you have it seems to do the trick. very slick cable routing and nice way around the 3" tire issue.
I bought a Tektro 857AL V-brake to mount on my 29" using the method described in this thread. The arms are spec’d at 110mm and looking at them they seemed like they might be long enough to work with my 24x3 Berm Master. I mounted them on that wheel for kicks and they fit. The arms on this brake appear to be long enough to clear any tire that will fit in the Nimbus 24" MUni frame.
Hmm…that is a good idea. I’ll try to remember bringing the seatpost clamp to work one of these days as we’ve got a drill press here at work which does these things much better than what I could achieve with my handheld el-cheapo drill at home. I’ll probably just drill a recess for the end of the cable so that the routing essentially stays the same.