Photo from the collection of Jeff Archer of First Flight Bicycles. If you think you know what this is, post your answer in the ‘comments’ section– the correct answer will be posted there on Tuesday!
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David, we have a winner, although it wasn’t sorta like a travel agent. It was a travel agent allowing the use of V-brakes on a bike with standard levers. For use either on a mountain bike or a tandem.
Inside it had a lever that had one position where the cable from the lever was anchored and another further out where the cable going to the brake was mounted. Super simple, but done in the typically stylish Ibis way.
I have to chime in. The Love unit was NOT like the travel agent, in that the travel agent actually WORKS. Ibis’ handy work was nice, but I remember modding the crap out of those things just to eliminate drag. The World Class V-Dapter came next, and while hoaky, was lighter and functioned better. I’ll get back in my corner.
CJ is spot on for this one. I remember going to the flea market at the Trexlertown Velodrome years ago, and Bobby Julich (before he had his CSC comeback) was there selling a metallic green Ibis Hakkalugi with Ultegra and White parts, V-brakes and the Love Unit. Looked pretty sweet. He wanted $800, but I figured a pro’s used steel cross bike might have seen a few hard miles…
It’s the Ibis Love Unit and it’s a handlebar mounted device that adds cable pull between STI levers and V-brakes, of particular use for tandems and touring bikes that paired drop bar levers with linear pull brakes. The device used increased leverage to increase the amount of cable pulled so that V-brakes would close enough to properly grab the rim. Retail was about $50. More info at the links below:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/4425/loveunit1.jpg
and
Posted a quick picture of one cracked open just so ya’ll could see the inner workings.
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g304/firstflightbikes/2012-02-15100248.jpg
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