I call the second brake levers on the tops of cross/gravel bikes "frogs". Because the Fils could not be sold with the flop n chop bullhorns, I put drop bars, aero levers, and frogs on it, even if it is a pure road bike.Take a look at the picture of mine. The stem is super short, and very high.
Also since the shifters are on the upper part of the bar & close to the stem, I installed a second set of brake handles. I ride it with the hands on the upper part of the bars, like 3/4 of the time, and only actually use the lower part, when going fast on a long straight. This creates only one problem - I don't have any "loose space" on the barsI basically use every wrapped part of the handlebars. That creates problems when you want to install additional equipment such as a rear view mirror (took me a lot of time to find a mirror, that wouldn't be stupidly mounted to the end of the lower bars, and small enough to mount to the side), bell (mine is mounted to the stem), headlight (mine is lower, mounted to the fork), or a computer (mine will be mounted in front of the stem, on a piece of 1" pipe
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Gravel bikes
- Thread starter Grant
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MattiThundrrr
Rattus All Terrainus
What the what? Does that actually work?!
Those are interrupter levers. I've never used them, but I imagine how effective they are lives or dies (hopefully not literally!) by careful setup. FWIW, they're supposedly much better than the old dual levers '70s/'80s road bikes had (I only tried those once on a bike I fixed up for my sister. I changed them out for modern levers for a bunch of reasons, but one is that the performance wasn't impressive, though it's possible that was due to the rest of the system, which all got replaced when I went from 27" to 700c ... yeah, I should have just bought her a new bike in the first place!).
The flat bar levers push the cable housing while the cable stays in place. The normal levers pull the cable but keep the housing in place. There is a hole in the flat bar levers that the cable runs through.
They literally saved me once from crashing into a car turned almost straight into me. They are far better than the classic two lever setup, since the cable pull is longer, and you can apply more force on them. Mine actually tore the front cable when I had that situation
MattiThundrrr
Rattus All Terrainus
Nice! Driveline looks super clean without a tensioner. Has it got adjustable dropouts? EBB? Magic gear? I'd love to do that with an old Stache 29+ or something.
I spent more than I should have and put a White Industries eccentric rear hub on it. Ridiculously smooth and quiet making this light, for me, bike (23lbs as it sits) a dream to ride.
MattiThundrrr
Rattus All Terrainus
Yeah, light is your friend when you only have one gear to use. That's the drawback to my 29+ SS idea. It'd be a TANK!
It's a world of difference between this and my SS Ogre. Needless to say, I'm not running the same gear ratio.
MattiThundrrr
Rattus All Terrainus
Surly
Vs your Trek
Vs your Trek
$20 Frameset Score on CL
I had almost all of the parts in house, found the All City gold ano hubset on sale and laced the wheels with DT Champions to ISO 630 Sun CR-18s.
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Ordered...... waiting
I hate waiting
I hate waiting
