Make it stop!! Make it stop!!!

Now that the bike is running I have realised that being able to stop is also rather important. the current braking configuration that I have is not cutting it since you have to start braking miles in advance and hope that you have judged the distance correctly. If you did not, it means dragging your shoe along the tar to assist. Even running against the compression of the engine does not seem all that effective, although it does aid substantially.

So this is the current braking setup:

Both of these brakes are individually activated. The top one is activated by the driver and the bottom one is handled by the passenger. the First step is going to be linking these two brakes and making them work off the one cable. with both of those working together the braking is already SUBSTANTIALLY better! For the top brake i found that the origional cable was very stretchy over that distance, the friendly guys in another department at work gave me a piece of 3mm stainless steel cable. It fitted into the standard cable guide (pushing it through was a little bit of a mission though) and has made a world of difference to the way the brakes work.

On the other end I'm building my own V-brakes. The V-brakes just make sense to me in the form of stopping power due to the larger amount of leverage on the brake pads. There are many discussions on the pros and cons of the various different rim braking mechanisms and I think one needs to get to a place where you make up you own mind and go with what you prefer. I prefer the V's, and the seemed the easiest to fabricate... This is where i am right now.

I have made myself some posts that i have welded to the for. As i have said before, every bad welder needs a good angle grinder... These welds have yet to be cleaned up and the pins straightened - i struggle to get the welds not to make everthing pull out of kelter.

Then i have started with the actual moving parts. I took a piece of 5x40mm flat bar and cut it diagonally. These will be the arms for the brakes. I might need to add a little tab on the outside to get the arms closer to the wheel since the fork is as wide as it is.

On the V-brakes there is a little piece of tubing that is bent at 90 degrees  and acts as part of the cable guide. This little part had me stumped for a couple of days. Being a technician in a hospital I started scratching around and i found this:

The metal ends in a broken stethoscope are the perfect size, already bent and is stainless steel. SCORE!

I have made a couple of little mods for variaous reasons and need to post those here as well.

My wife complained about fumes while we were riding and I then lengthened the exhaust in a successfull attempt to move the fumes a little bit back. I used some standard 15mm copper pipe and 2 45 degree elbows that were soldered in place, Wrapped a little piece of old rubber tube around the end tip of the exhaust and slipped the elbow (that is now sport 2 slits) over that. Fastened it all up with a hose clamp and secured the end with a little piece of wire. I hate using wire but it was all I had.

i thinks it looks pretty cool and the rubber makes a surprisingly good seal.

The airfilter seemed a little restricting so I added some holes to let more air in. That also made a bit of a difference in the performance of the motor since it is now not being starved for air anymore. now the aircleaner now looks like an alien - not planned.

Further plans before painting include panniers underneath and behind the babyseat for some added packing space.

But first we need to make all of this stop. :)