This is a little DIY project to fix up a nice single speed bike with new road bike brake levers in under two hours and about 50 bucks.
A friend left me his fixed-gear hipster bike when I moved to San Francisco. It is an awesome bike: very stylish eye-catching green saddle and MTB pedals as well as extremely reliable with a great steel frame and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tiers. The things that have bothered me are the bar top (sissy) levers. Especially in the city when you often have to brake in a matter of milliseconds it makes riding on the hoods or using the drops hard for me.
What you need
The following is what I used, although all the items are interchangeable. Essentially I ordered online what was easiest to get:
- Brake cable and housing, e.g. Shimano ~15 USD
- Handlebar tape, e.g. Planet Bike Comfort GEL ~10 USD
- Road bike brake levers, e.g. Tektro Aero Alloy RL340 ~25 USD
You also need electrical tape, Allen keys and ideally a brake cable cutter (I did not have one, but it makes it much easier to get cleanly cut cables that are easy to insert into the cable housing).
How to do it
For all visual learners out there I made a short gallery. For a step-by-step description scroll down.
- Remove old handlebar tape and bar plugs.
- Loosen the top bar brakes and pull them from the bar.
- Slip the new brake levers on the bar, align the bottom approximately with the bottom of the drops and make sure they face straight forward.
- Insert the brake cable into the front of the lever and pull it through. The round cable end will fit nicely in a round slot of the lever (if it does not then you probably have MTB brake cables).
- Swap out the old brake cable and cable housing for the new one and adjust your brake.
- Wrap the new handlebar tape starting at the bar end and always overlapping by 1/2 the tape width. Fix the handlebar tape end with electrical tape and put the bar plus into the bar end.
Pretty easy, right?
If you need more guidance on wrapping the handlebar tape have a look here: