I’ve wanted to try this for a while now and finally got around to doing it. Hook up a standard brake lever and a drag lever both attached by cable to the same caliper. The best of both worlds in the drag verse standard debate. Although the brakes, cables and levers are decidedly low tech the results are fantastic. After several combined muni / road rides on my 36er this brake setup does everything I hoped it would plus a bit more. The only work required was to add some metal to the caliper to take the additional cable and the drag lever needed small changes to orientate to the right cable exit direction and lever position. I thought there might be an issue with the cables fighting each other or snagging each other but it turned out to be no problem at all. While I was at it I made up a KH style under seat bracket with combined standard and drag brake which is ready to go if and when I want to try instead of the T7 style bars.
I was wondering… about building a G29, but I cannot decide about the brake lever… near the saddle for light muni or far out on the handlebar for road riding?
So a question arises… does exist a single hydraulic brake activated via 2 different levers?
The product you are looking for doesn’t exist as far as I know, and would be very hard to get working properly. You can cobble something together with a T fitting, and if you have two brake handles and master cylinders without reservoirs (most modern brakes seem to have a reservoir), it might work. But added complexity (twice the brake levers to get smashed on the ground), and likely inconsistent feel are probably not worth it.
If you absolutely need to do it, I’d try and figure out how to mount two full sets of magura brakes on the same frame.
I’d just move the brake to the position you need each time you ride. Takes about 90 seconds, if you take your time.
Don’t Mad4One make a frame with two disc tabs, one on each side? I wonder if you could use one with an internal disc hub and the other with a KH EDB crank?
There’s probably a perfectly good reason why not, but lets face it, it’d look cool!
Interesting to see someone eventually having done this. I thought about the hydraulic setup a few years back and decided not to bother due to the technical challenges as discussed above.
Years later, I just have an exceptionally strong middle finger on my left hand from downhill dragging and constant brake use on my freewheel!
I was thinking about using the same rotor and reversing the dbrake. I don’t know exactly how, but I think I could try. A caliper will set in the front part of the rotor and one in the back part
This Y-junction on a hydraulic brake sounds vaguely familiar but I was not able to find the post on the forum with a quick search (a more thorough search is necessary).
However, it really sound like a problem specific to unicycles so pretty sure it was shown here (but I will check the french forum as well just in case…)
I feel like I’ve seen a Y-junction hydro brake on a bike adapted for a guy with one hand before. He had a prosthetic claw on his other hand that could grab the grip reliably, but it didn’t have enough fingers to hold on and pull a brake at the same time, so he had a setup done that let him use one lever for both brakes.
I still reckon two separate brakes is a better idea. How about a disc and a rim brake? Put a Magura on the rim, and your choice of disc (Whether that’s an EDB or a Nimbus hub/D’brake), set one of them up as a drag brake and the other as a more powerful yanking lever.
How you’d set up a drag brake like OP’s with hydraulics, I don’t know
Freewheelers might be able to benefit from this if our hubs were ISIS, or if there was an option for cotterless cranks that were compatable with external discs. I’m riding brakeless, but for people still using brakes (read: “sensible people”) being able to stop the cranks and keep coasting could have a much more stable platform to balance and hop on. I’ll have to see if I can set something up tomorrow to experiment. It could certainly help my power transfer while pumping.
For the cotterless cranks you could use a young rider bmx right crank spider. I used it for my huni-rex… however you will need 2 brake, one for the cranks only and one for the wheel
In the pre-KH Spirit past, there was a disk brake kit using Sinz cranks and a rotor attached to the spider (maybe it was Mountainuni like the UCM adapter).
Anyway, Sinz sells these cranks in both ISIS and square. So theoretically, you could test what you described
Do you have a link? I wasn’t able to find anything. And I know I’d need two brakes if I wanted to be able to stop, but I’m currently not using any brakes on my F26, so I’d just use the one to keep my cranks stable. If I wanted to add a stoping brake later then I’d have to figure out that setup.
I found the Sinz Cotterless cranks. Are the adapters still sold? Some older photos seem to show the disc mounted directly to the spider.
