#mountainbikes

They have always felt quite soft in use, the small piston in the master cylinder struggled to push enough fluid to activate the pistons in the calipers. However, when they bit into the disk, they bit hard and braking was generally excellent, until suddenly, it wasn't. The cause of this sudden change was because I did something a little daft, but great fun. I tried mountain biking on my trike and pushed them to the limit of what they were capable of.

Obviously, we filmed a video of this trip and despite the vibration that a fully rigid trike suffered, the film came out great, using Wifey's awesome Insta 360 cameras.

So what led to this silly adventure and what damage was the result of this journey? It is easy to answer this question. Wifey asked me ages ago about taking the trikes up into the local woods to ride some trails. I said no, stating that the trikes would not work, especially on greasy climbs over slippery limestone and gravel. With me being the wise old sage of mountain biking, Wifey nodded her head and the idea was dropped. This was until we went for a local ride along the sea front and then got bored. I said that it was a shame that we had nowhere fun that we could ride, but then I remembered Wifey's words about riding into the woods. It was a warm, dry, end of summer day and so I suggested that we try, we could always turn around and go home if it was impossible. So we set off past Birnbeck Pier and found the entrance to the woods, a spiteful little climb that is littered with greasy limestone and loose grit, with the occasional patch of thick grotty, gritty mud. I went first and fully expected to get no more than a few metres into the woods. It is true that the back wheel on Darth Dotty is easily spun out when grip gets sketchy, but I was genuinely surprised when she just kept going. The added boost of the Bafang pedal assist system really helped, but I had to keep it in Eco mode to prevent it spinning out the wheel on the loose stuff. At the half way marker, where the bridleway splits off to descend to the footpath that runs beside the Toll Road, I finally span the wheel and came to a grinding halt. However, a few kicks of the pedals and a little rocking to find traction and I was away again, to continue climbing up the rocky and muddy track. Wifey followed me up and where I got stuck, she passed me by with a wave and a smile. We pulled over to catch our breath and discuss the progress and how impressed we both were by the abilities of the trikes. I now consider the wise old sage of mountain biking to an honorific that I no longer deserve. Setting off again, we continued the climb up into the woods, though the beautiful autumnal colours and occasional mucky puddle and reached what we refer to as the roundabout tree. This is a lovely old (possibly Chestnut) tree that sits in the middle of the three connecting paths and makes for a great natural roundabout. From there, we continued climbing for a few more metres until we hit the top of the hill and the track that leads to the water tower. So where did the damage occur that put my trike out of action for a few days? Not on the climb...

At the water tower, we came to a stop. The area was swarming with dog walkers and I had managed to find a fresh pile of the unmentionable mess left just for me by a bad owner, that my front right wheel picked up and proceeded to flick everywhere as it came off the tyre at speed. I tried rubbing it off on tufts of grass, but it was fairly determined to stay and so I decided to run through the muddiest of muddy puddles on the way back down, to remove the offending organic matter. As of this moment, Darth Dotty was still in full working condition...

After a brief detour because I have the navigational ability of a plastic bag floating on a polluted pond, we made it back to the roundabout tree and as the old adage goes, what goes up, must come down... Oh boy, did I come down. What had been a greasy, bumpy climb up, was a hilarious, slippery descent and I cackled for most of the way back down. I maxed out my speed at close to thirty kilometres per hour, which is faster than the Bafang is legally allowed to provide pedal assist and then slid sideways into a bramble bush, without stopping until I remounted the pathway a few metres later. I came to a grinding halt and behind me, Wifey was equally happy. No damage was noticed at this point.

Having regrouped and after a wee break that saw me baring my backside to a thick and prickly bush on a steep and slippery bank, we set off once again, back down the rocky track. Speed was quickly picked up and like a character from a fairy tale, picking up her skirts and running home as the clock strikes midnight, I pushed Darth Dotty, the ICE trike, as hard as I could. After a brief moment of fear as I nearly flipped her on her side, but managed to get both front wheels back on the track, I hit the rocky section and oh boy, was this bit fun! The final hundred metres or so, is rocks leading into gravel and I left poor Wifey behind, finally sliding to a stop in the lay-by next to the Toll Road.

I am reminded of the wonderful film, The Blues Brothers. A movie I cherish, because as a child and just before I was adopted by him, my father bonded with me over this movie. It is full of fantastic music, incredible car chases and some unbelievable stunts. However, at the end of the movie, when the brothers arrive at the tax office, to pay the tax bill on the orphanage that raised them, their poor old car finally collapses into scrap, having been abused and battered by the journey to get there. As I looked at Darth Dotty, I could imagine her doing the same. The front brakes had faded to nothing, the rear brake felt like it was made of wood and I have no idea how I managed to stop. What I could not see was the damage to the battery holder, but I could feel that something was very wrong.

When we got back home and had both showered, I started to look at Darth Dotty and quickly found the damage. I was lucky not to have snapped the battery holder in half and it was obviously in need a major re-design to make it safe for long term use. The front brakes though were shot. I stripped them down, cleaned them and bled them, but I could not get the left hand caliper to operate correctly. The right caliper maintained the strength and bite that it originally had, but the left barely stopped the wheel at all, leading to only having a single front brake. I popped out the pistons and they seemed to be moving freely, but something was wrong and I do not know what that was. However, under load, the right wheel would lock without hesitation, but the left barely came on. The lever pulled back to the handlebar and I wondered if there was air in the system, so I bled the whole lot again and no bubbles came out. Having gone though almost a full bottle of mineral oil, there was most certainly no air in the system, but the lever would slowly just fade as the lever hit the handlebar. I will admit to being saddened by this and I do not know what I have done, but there is clearly some damage in there. Later while in discussion with my wonderful daughter, a hydraulics expert and fellow mountain biker, she suggested that maybe a swap of the master cylinder, to something slightly larger with the capacity to push four pistons. Her suggestion was to try a lever from German brand Magura, who have released a specialist mountain bike brake that runs a four piston caliper. Magura also make brakes and clutch levers for motorcycles and they produce a hydraulic clutch conversion that fits to the Suzuki SV650. I will admit that I have wanted one of these systems for a long time to make clutch control easier on my fabulous motorcycle.

So after a bit of research, I found the contact details for Magura and I sent them a message, asking if their master cylinder was large enough to push the four caliper pistons. A day or so later, the reply that came back rather surprised me. Magura make a hydraulic system that is designed for cargo bikes and trikes with a double wheeled axle. Why was this never made public? No where on the website could I find a link to this system and even now, when I know it exists, I can still barely find any information about it. This system is called the Big Twin. The master cylinder has a larger piston than standard, meaning that it can push four pistons easily. They suggested that this lever could potentially work with the Artek calipers, but were reluctant to say for sure. However, they knew for certain that it was capable of pushing the pistons in their own Big Twin mirrored calipers. Why did no one tell me that this system existed before?

The next step was of course to order the brakes for both trikes. My brakes had failed, but Wifey had suffered similar and slightly worse damage to all three brakes on Rebel Rogue, her trike. The cost of the brakes was a lot and sadly, the wise old sage of mountain biking that is Nik at SJS, was unable to order them for us. Instead we had to go to a different bike shop and one that we had never used before, but who were a Magura dealer. A quick e-mail conformed that the shop could order the parts, but they not only wanted a huge sum to pay for the brakes, but they wanted to charge us the cost of postage from Germany. Why such a cost? Because of Brexit making trade with the EU a lot harder and putting extra steps into a system that used to work smoothly and a whole lot better than the current situation, as brought about by the failed dealings and down right lies of the toxic fool Boris Johnson. I have no idea how much the brakes cost in the EU, but here in post Brexit Britain, they cost £400! Yes, you read that right. Four hundred quid for two calipers and a master cylinder. I could only imagine that they were made from the finest materials, machined from pure billet aluminium or magnesium, maybe an exotic carbon fibre brake lever, attached to a machined aluminium master cylinder...

What turned up was a plastic and cast metal mess of such ugliness, it could win the gurning Olympic prize for the next forty years. The lever blade is a cheap moulded plastic, as is the master cylinder! Yes, you read that correctly. The master cylinder is made of plastic. The clamp that holds it onto the handlebar is an aluminium casting, that the master cylinder rattles around in. It does however allow for positioning of the lever on either side of the bars, by turning the fluid reservoir inside the clamp.

The calipers are sand cast units that are basically old Julie units that are then machined out to make room for the pistons. However, the rest of the caliper is left rough, with the imperfections of the sand casting process left in place.

There is no attempt made to make them look nice, but the inner faces of the calipers have the 'Magura Big' label printed on the side. If you were to put the APSE Artek units next to the Magura units, the red anodised Artek calipers are so much better made, with post mount fixings that allow for infinite adjustment of the calipers and perfect alignment.

The old Julie units use the I.S. mounting system, which when combined with the subtle lack of alignment of the ICE kingpins made centring them on the disk really difficult. I ended up using machined aluminium spacers that were three millimetres thick, combined with all of the super thin alignment washers that came with them. When I ran out of alignment washers, I raided my box of Hope spares, using the ones that came with the old Hope C2 calipers that I bought in 1998. Using a set of Clarkes disk rotors (because the Magura do not include them in a £400 brake system!), I spent a couple of hours aligning every caliper as well as I could. To align the Artek units, took around thirty seconds. Once the calipers are loosely fitted to the frame, the brake lever is pulled, which centres the caliper on the disk and the bolts can be tightened. Like I say, this takes thirty seconds. To fit the old style Julie calipers, took over two hours and I was constantly having to remove the caliper and change the washers. When I thought that they were finally fitted, I checked the alignment of Wifey's left hand wheel and this was clearly well out and the drag on the disk was awful. The lever had not pumped up and so what I thought was centred, was actually still badly misaligned. Yes, this was a beginners mistake, but it was also close to one in the morning and I was tired. When I came back to it the next day, I checked the Magura calipers again and found that the ICE kingpin on wifey's trike is misaligned due to the welding. I know that the cycle industry has been accused of poor performance when complying with accuracy standards in the past, but this is pretty poor.

Finally, I had the calipers fitted and bled and ready to test, but the weather is foul and I have too much pain to even try taking the trikes outside. I am in the process of changing my medications again and while I ween myself off of one medication and onto another, my pain levels and energy levels are shot to hell. This means that the trikes are hung in the hallway until I feel fit enough to test the new brakes. This all feels slightly anticlimactic. I wish that I could tell you that the Magura system is brilliant and worth the £400, but just by fitting it and cutting down the hoses that were so long, they could have been fitted to a long wheelbase transit van, I am largely unimpressed. The Artek lever just does not have a big enough piston to push the four pistons in the calipers safely enough for the rotten British conditions, that can go from dry and dusty, to pad ruining gritty and wet during a ride. As the pads wear down, there is not enough fluid in the system to account for the distance from the disk rotors and so the system fades out under extreme use. I am so saddened by this, because the Artek units are so much better finished, being polished, anodised and painted. The lever fitting is easier and caliper fitting is far superior, they just cannot cope with riding in such wet and grotty conditions, over such difficult ground. This could be fixed by slightly increasing the size the master cylinder piston by a small amount and the system would be fantastic and yes, I would pay £400 for it and feel like I got a bargain. Meanwhile, I consider it unacceptable for a £400 brake system to made from plastic and to have a plastic lever blade. Perhaps the Big Twin system will work really well, but even then, it won't last because of the materials it is made from. Plastic levers do not cope with the sustained abuse of mountain biking. One crash and these are... well the language I could use would limit the readership of this blog.

Should Magura ever read this, I stand firmly by these comments. Your product looks cheap and once fitted it feels cheap. Working on it is horrible, because the parts made of plastic, feels really fragile. When refitting the cover over the fluid reservoir, the tiny screws going into plastic feel like they want to strip. Magura say in their information that once fitted, you hardly ever have to service the brakes. This is clealry because if you removed the cap more than a couple of times, the threads are going to fail, because they are made of plastic.

For an organisation which has feet in both the motorcycle world and the mountain bike world, you should know better. I certainly know better and for the record, I will not be buying the clutch conversion for my SV650, because I have been so unimpressed by the quality of the Big Twin brake system. Paying £400 for plastic brakes is shameful. To quantify this, I had a quick look at the Hope website and a two piston caliper with lever, made from machined aluminium, costs £200... If only they made mirrored calipers. I would be more than happy to run a set of Hopes for the next thirty years. My old C2s were only retired because the seal in the master cylinder is not available any more... after thirty years!

I genuinely hope that in the future, APSE Artek are able to fix their master cylinder, because it is better in every way and it is far easier to work on, with a far better attachment system all round.