NOW YOU STAY (ALL ABOUT PARKING BRAKES)

NOW YOU STAY!!!

There is a joke about a woman who drives her car into the parking lot at a shopping center to do a bit of shopping. A man nearby sees her exit her vehicle and then turn toward the car pointing her finger saying “Now you stay!” Thinking she is talking to her car he says to her … “Lady, why don’t you just put it in ‘park’?” What he couldn’t see from his vantage point is the small dog seated inside the car which the lady was talking to.

Now that has absolutely nothing to do with tadpole trikes, but I thought it was appropriate to lead into what I want to discuss here … some means of getting our trikes to ‘stay’ when we dismount and leave our trikes unattended.

Both ICE and HP Velotechnik offer a parking brake … either a caliper type or disc type as both are options.  If any other manufacturers offer a parking brake I am not aware of it.

That being said, Catrike now comes with locking brake levers … a huge improvement over the Velcro strap they used to provide.

So unless your trike comes with some sort of parking brake or locking brake levers you need to come up with some means of keeping your trike where you leave it as I assure you that saying to your trike “now you stay” isn’t going to work.

Using a Velcro strap works, but are a pain in the neck to use in my opinion.

I have also used a heavy duty rubber band of sorts to wrap around the twist grip and hook both ends around the brake lever. This worked pretty good, but again it was a bit of a pain to use.

And I used plastic cable ties which also worked pretty good. It only required one hand to use it. I much preferred it over the Velcro strap.

There are locking parking brake levers which are my preference. They are what I have used for several years now.

For me to use them they require two hands to engage the lock.  They sure beat using the Velcro strap method.

There are other ways to keep your trike from taking off on its own, but these are the most common means that I am aware of.

One thing I want to mention is that if your trike has a rear brake it is intended to be used strictly as a parking brake. Braking the rear wheel, especially by itself with no front brake application, can be dangerous and have bad consequences. The two front brakes on a tadpole trike are plenty powerful and effective enough to stop a trike. There is no need of using a rear brake.

Regardless of what means you use to keep your trike from departing the scene without you aboard I hope you can always …

KEEP ON TRIKIN’

A FREE GIFT awaits you!