the winter is slow and long when you work in a bike shop. so as you can imagine i have to do things to keep me from going further over the edge than i am already.
one such activity was to build my own brake lever for my bmx. unfortunate, as it always is this project further expanded into a two part project that culminated in a completely re-built braking system for my bike.

step1. finding a suitable lever: everyone knows that to get a brake to work properly and to have the proper amount of power you have to get a lever that pulls the proper amount of cable. in the case of a bmx with a caliper brake you cannot use a new v-brake style lever but have to use an older style cantilever brake lever. luckily i collect a lot of junk parts at work. in my collection i had recently acquired a lever that i came to dub the 'bat lever' a lever with finger grooves and a two piece clamp system. perfect for my purposes.

step2. i drilled the damn thing out so that i could fit the barrel/splitter section of a regular gyro brake cable inside the lever body. at the same time i removed the pivot/cable head holder assembly that attaches to the lever blade.

step3. i then proceeded to cut the gyro barrel/splitter in half and then drill holes in the lever body to accomidate set screws. i then inserted the barrel/splitter inside of the lever body and fixed it in place with bondo and the two set screws. at this point i also inserted two pieces of housing into the lever and bondoed around them to make the housing mount cleaner and more secure.

step4. i then slotted the lever blade to allow a cable to fit in easily which would later be held in place by a small philips head pedal pin.

step5. i then sanded the bondo and painted the entire unit. black of course.

step6. dry fitting the lever to the bike i then figured out the proper housing length for the two pieces coming out of the body.

step7. after mounting the lever and figuring out the proper lenght of housing i was ready to install the cable, which in this case was a single road brake cable doubled back on itself. this step required a bit of modification to the gyro bearing that enables a de-tangler to work. what i did was to drill a lager slot in the top bearing tab to accomidate the head of the brake cable so that it would seat nicely. i then installed the cable and put in the philips screw. a few minor adjustments to the barrel adjusters and it worked. but not as well as i had hoped (although i didn't really expect that much from a home-made lever).
this then started my second project: installing what is called a 'london' mod. running two lower cables instead of a gyro cable. two derailleur cables, some housing, two small aluminum plates, and an extra hombre brake later and it worked quite well.