While we have been trying to get silver inverse brake levers made, Soma has done it and we have the result in stock. Now make no mistake; these are not as elegant as the eventual VO levers. But they are available from the VO store right now, which counts for something.
The photo shows them mounted in our Belleri Tour bars. What a perfect combination for an elegant city bike.
Today I ordered two runs of custom handlebars from Nitto. Both are porteur bars, but made from the tubing used for Nitto's road bars. So they are nice and thick when taped and accept inverse brake levers. One is a version of the Nito Promenade bar we currently stock. The other is narrower, more traditional, and better for riding in city traffic. Please don't ask me when they will arrive; I don't know yet.
Finally, Soma has come up with some very nice bar-end plugs that are silver, yet lock in like Velox plugs. At only 8 grams each they will help with that ultralight randonneuse build.
Incredible. As soon as I bought a pair of functional but ugly black ITM levers on Ebay, silver ones appear.
ReplyDeleteChris: Will either (or both) of the new Nitto bars work with mountain bike brake levers?
ReplyDeleteJoel, No they won't and that's the whole point of it. The current Nitto bars work with mountain bike levers. That also means they are too thin when wrapped with cloth tape in the traditional way and won't accept inverse levers or bar-end shifters. The new ones will solve those problems.
ReplyDeleteThanks Chris. I read again and noticed I missed the intent.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be so blunt, but these resemble a pair of vintage French inverse levers about as much as a pair of ape-hangers resemble Nitto promenade bars.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the bottlenecks to a V.O. quality version? Money? Time? Technical know-how? My guess is that if your constituancy knew the answer, the right person would step up to the plate with a clever solution.
The issues in getting the VO version are the same as with any other product. Working with the smaller manufacturers in this business always takes a great deal of time. It's impossible to rush products through (unless they are being made in the US). We must work through an agent who must translate our requests. And these small family run factories often have enough work and are very careful about going into new ventures.
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteWhat ID bar would one use with your new levers??
Thanks, BB
Hi BB, You know that your bikes are very much responsible for this whole elegant city bike direction!
ReplyDeleteThe original plan was to have the levers fit an ID of 15.5mm and up, but now that Nitto will make the larger diameter bars, we may just change it to 19-21mm. Thoughts?
I'd love to get a set of these to use with my newly purchased albatross bars. However, I'm concerned that the brake levers will not work with my direct-pull brakes. Will these work, or am I relegated to using mountain bike brake levers?
ReplyDelete