[Closed] Any one handed riders????

There was a guy missing a complete arm on the site.

I also met a woman with a paralysed hand riding. She had cable discs with bot discs operated by one lever using a cable splitter and a bigger rotor on the back so it always locked the back first. Adjustemnt in the cables also altered the balance.

You can also use hydro discs with one lever running two callipers - you will have a lot of travel on the lever however.

Another option might be the nexus hub with aback pedalling / roller brake so only a lever needed for the front

Gearing - the alfine can be used with a nexus twist shift ad this might mount fine on the left upside down

I've built something like this up for a chap without fingers on his left hand.

We ran a friction thumbie for the front mech, normal shifted for the rear. This was in the time of V brakes,Am sure you could arrange the and I found an adapt or which ran a dual cable from one brake lever. Think it was by Dia Compe.

Sure you could do similar for your fella here!

Good luck!

I have a mate who is missing an arm and a leg, he has done the puffer, relentless and many other events like that. He has both shifters on the one side and his brake has been modified so that one lever operates both brakes.

Years back when I raced DH there used to be a rider who raced Senior at all the Nationals who had one hand and he was pretty fast!(Tom someone?) his other arm had an attachment that clamped onto his bars. he had 2 hope brake levers and his shifter all mounted on the one side.
I'd have thought the guys at Hope would know about his set-up (they used to be at most races)

both brakes working from the one lever would be fairly easy to do but not so easy to control in use.

many years ago, there used to be quite a choice of brake levers that took two cables, mostly for tandems and trikes, has anyone got any retro stock?

Some BMX brakes have 2 cables from one lever, have a look for one of those?

he had 2 hope brake levers and his shifter all mounted on the one side.

I'm really struggling to visualize how that works, how was it set up? Must take a fair bit of skill to manage 2 brake levers with 1 hand too!

sambob - good point, isn't it for the free-style riders with gyro's?

we have a guy rides classic motorcycle trials with us he has only one hand. he uses a hook for his left hand with a quick relase thing. clutch control modified so he can do it with his right hand ( as well as throttle and front brake) he is more than competant and is frankly a bit amazing..

I used to have a girlfriend with one hand she could ride a bike and was bloody hot.

thats all I have to say on the matter.

Head over to MTBR forums and look up man w/ one hand ([url= http://forums.mtbr.com/member.php?u=233972 ]link[/url]). A veritable fountain of information and a top bloke, too.

I used to work with a bloke who did sportives with a bloke with NO hands. He had two ball and socket arrangements to hold the bars apparently. My colleague was not able to explain how he stopped the bike though - singlespeed and a coaster brake was all I could think of.

You could investigate coaster brakes for the rear, with a hydro up front. Don't shimano do them?

TN iirc is married to a guy with one arm. posting history here with various threads that are relevant.

www.singletrackworld.com/forum/profile/tn

I'd have thought the guys at Hope would know about his set-up (they used to be at most races)

In one of the recent singletrack mags they did an interview with hope and one of them was riding with a single brake lever set up

 

I used to work with a bloke who did sportives with a bloke with NO hands.

This is getting ridiculous, I'm half expecting someone to come along and say that they know someone who cycles with no arms and just one leg. To be quickly followed by someone who knows a cyclist without any arms or legs........all the ingredients for a Monty Python sketch 😀

Addiscombe CC has a vice-captain (roadie) who only has the use of one arm, the other one is limp/paralysed and has to be strapped to the bars. Obviously he has a modified lever for both brakes and one for the gears, but I don't know the details of how it works. He's bleedin fast though.

they need to obtain one of these somehow http://www.bebionic.com/2011/04/26/brazilian-patient-celso-demonstrates-his-bebionic-hand/

its always fascinated me assistive technologies after i finished designing the above as we plough millions into technology that could be used for people who have had a mishap

id like to do carbon fibre crutches with a shock in the bottom next

I know a guy who motorbikes with one arm.

He's fashioned a clutch lever & brake lever that fit with each other and his hand, and operates them with 2 fingers each. He has a hook on his other jacket sleeve that keeps his "arm" on the other grip.

I would imagine a front/rear brake lever and 1x9 or 1x10 setup could be done quite easily in a similar fashion.

I've met the guy SbZ knows.
He's got an impressive set up (he's quite impressive too).

The hoses for his brake are spliced so i think he just gets front and back at the same braking force, no front end bias, unless it's a lot cleverer than i can imagine.

And teh shifters, from memory are mounted above and below the bars, require planning ahead for the chainring shift

I know that hope do a splitter to run both breaks off one lever.
Get in touch and explain, I'm sure they'll sort you out.

Steering damper would be a good idea as well

Hi. Well remembered clubber. My husband does indeed ride with one arm.

His current setup is a Felt Virtue full suss bike with avid elixir brakes. (hydraulic disks seemed easiest for control, but you need to select a lever with the reservoir in-line, because if it usually sits on top, when you flip it over, it doesn't work so well)
He has both levers stacked on the right bar and then his standard gear changers also stacked on the same bar. He does have very long fingers though, so this setup might not be suitable for someone with smaller hands. It looks REALLY busy too (will try to find a pic) but he swears it works for him.
He also has a Hopey steering damper fitted, so the suspension deals with the up/down wobbles and the damper with the side to side.
There are lots of options out there but it just happened that this way, which is pretty simple, worked for him.
Feel free to email me if you want any tips - I will pass them on to him and see whether he can help.

"He has both levers stacked on the right bar and then his standard gear changers also stacked on the same bar. He does have very long fingers though, so this setup might not be suitable for someone with smaller hands. It looks REALLY busy too (will try to find a pic) but he swears it works for him."

SNAP!!

[IMG] [/IMG]

Top (flipped) changer is for front mech and top brake lever is front. Its not very clear from the pic, but the ends of the brake levers aren't in line so different fingers on levers for full control.

LOL. Had to do a double take on that pic - I thought that was J's bike. 🙂 Same as you, his brake levers are slightly out of line so he is able to use one finger on one, one on the other so he has the same full control.

He's not riding at the mo, unfortunately. His sarcoma has come back in his lung so it's chemo time again. He's gutted as we were meant to be riding at Mayhem this weekend...

Wow, I really wasn't expecting such a response!
By the sound of it, it's actually no big deal, just a case of juggling (no pun intended) the levers around. I like the sound of using a bigger disc on the back, as well as front...
Think in his case, a 1x9 set up would work best as his budget will be about £350 all in. I like the challenge of building a decent bike on a budget!

It's times like this when the internet forum comes into its own. When we were looking into this, I couldn't have imagined the weird and wonderful ideas that came up and just how interested people are.
I am sure you'll sort something out for your colleague and I am sure if you run into difficulties, the good folk on here will be able to come up with a solution. Good luck - to you and to him. 🙂

id like to do carbon fibre crutches with a shock in the bottom next

They do do crutches with shocks in them.

Sorry for disappearing for ages! Have been reading all these posts with a lot of interest, we've picked up an old Muddy Fox Pathfinder frame, some Giant forks. It was never going to be a high end Downhill style build, he just wanted a decent retro-ish bike for general riding, so I think we're going to try a 1x9 or 8 set-up and I've been thinking about splicing 2 Avid V brake levers together..........
It really does make you consider how fiddly some parts are.
I'll try and post some pics as we go.
Thanks again you lovely people!

Some real tough people here, hats off to you all.

I've ridden and raced a fair bit with Jon-Allan Butterworth, he turns up at some of the local crits and track races as training. He's a World Champion and Paralympic track rider. A former RAF Regiment guy, his left arm got blown off by a missile(!) in Iraq and he uses a ball and socket joint which clamps into an attachment on the left bar. On his road bike he's got the 2 STIs set up on the right bar, opposite ways round so he can use both brakes and both shifters.
You can just about make it out in this pic:

[img] [/img]

Sarah Storey had a similar set-up on her road bike but she used a bar-end mounted lever on the right hand bar for the front mech coupled with a normal R/H STI for the rear mech. The one brake lever controlled both brakes by means of a cable splitter. That's OK on a road bike where you generally operate both brakes together, on a MTB you'd want separate control front and rear as per TN's pic above.

Just a thought, a gripshift rear shifter could easily be mounted on the left side of the bars upside down and still be fairly easy to use.

This is where that di2 stuff may be usefull

Mol grips who does the shock absorbing crutches? I

Dunno compositepro - an ex-colleague of mine has a son with some kind of problem and he had shock absorbing crutches for some reason or other. He was talking about having to fix them somehow or other cos they kept breaking.

I wonder if anyone's come up with a 'combi' style brake for bikes? i.e. 1 level that does both front and rear brake. Lot's of scooters have them fitted these days incl. mine, seems quite a nice idea.

edit - just re-read, seems like people have! 🙂