We Don't Need No Stinkin' Brakes!

Oh yes you do!
That's what My Friend Kyle(MFK) said to his kid.
Who was trying to ride his BMX style bicycle sans braking action.
I packed up said bicycle and brought it in to the Flat Tire Skunkworks to see if I could work some stopping magic.
I gotta say, even when them brakes were working correctly, they were mighty strange:



I forgot to take before pictures cause once I got them side cutters in my hand, I just started right in!
Lemme tell you, cables and housing were a flying to and fro!
Remember, I am a professional, don't try this at home.
Anyways them ring thingys around the head set were where the cables were attached. Seems like each brake lever actuated both cables which them pulled up one of them rings, which in turn pulled on the two brakes.
The rings were so that you could spin the handle bars completely around without the cables getting wrapped around the head set.
Go figure.
I mean it was sort a neat set up, but not really practical.
Sort of like the rear brake:



You can see where the cross over cable runs around and then crosses behind the seat post.
I was going to undo it, but I just left like that.
After looking at it for a bit, I decided that maybe it was so that the cables wouldn't interfere with the chain ring, which was sort of close to the caliper arm.
Boy, check out them gold cable end crimps!
The front was interesting too:



The front brake cable went down into the quill part of the stem, out the bottom of the fork and back up to the upside down looking caliper.
I stared at that for a minute, trying to think of a possible reason it was done that way, and I decided it was a parts bin thing.
You know, that was what they had in the parts bin.
So anyways I changed out the cable splitters and put in some new housing and cables and now MFK's kid is good to go and stop.
It felt pretty good, making use of my Jedi Skilz on something other than my own bicycles.
Even if it was one of them bicycles I should have taken this to:



If you know what I mean.