“The return of the old man and his Rekluse”

In my last article I forgot to mention one other small disadvantage of using a Rekluse Z-Pro Start. Actually I didn’t forget to mention it because at the time it was an unidentified issue, then one day on the side of a steep hill it became an identified issue. I’m talking about one of those situations when you find yourself unable to continue up a hill and want or need to turn around and go back down. Sometimes if the hill is steep enough or the soil is loose enough simply using the front brake to keep you from sliding back down the hill won’t work. Killing the motor won’t give you that extra engine breaking because with the Rekluse the rear wheel simply free wheels. Because of this freewheeling it makes it very difficult (In my case anyway) to turn the bike around especially if it’s a narrow trail and point it down hill, normally killing the motor would allow you to have the rear wheel locked up while you slide, wrestle and maneuver the bike until it’s headed back down hill. This problem may not happen very often especially with the Rekluses ability to continue chugging uphill without using the clutch, but even once can be once to many, especially if the bike ends up on top of you, which happened to me twice. One of the solutions is to have a hand operated rear brake this would allow you to be off the side of the bike and have the ability to lock the front and rear brake at the same time and not have to kill the motor.

Rekluse offers the option of retaining the clutch lever and having a very sano looking clutch lever and hand brake mounted on the same side for cable operated clutches, but does not offer one for the bikes that have hydraulic clutches, like KTM’s. (You can have a hand operated rear brake or a clutch but not both, I want both) So once again having more time and spare change than sense I decided to see if I could have both for my KTM.

I had the idea but not the skills or the tools to make this happen, so I enlisted the help of my friend Mark Gibson who has both. After some trial and error we came up with a combination using a mountain bike brake that had a small master cylinder, then made hydraulic lines to tie the clutch lever and the rear brake master cylinder together, unfortunately it didn’t work, tying the clutch lever into the rear brake master cylinder by stacking the banjo fittings on top of each other won’t work. Maybe that’s why Rekluse has a separate sleeve that screws into the top of the rear master cylinder, thus creating a master cylinder within a master cylinder.

So instead of reinventing the wheel I decided to use some of Rekluse’s parts. The bicycle hand brake didn’t have a way to bleed it properly so I also ordered a different bicycle hand brake one that had a larger reservoir, adjustable lever position and a way to bleed it. The tricky part again became adapting the hydraulic line to the new bicycle brake.

This is where Mark came in again, he was able to create a way to tie the two together. With that part solved I installed the new set up, the clutch lever was tied into the rear brake master cylinder and became the hand operated rear brake and the bicycle brake was used to operate the clutch.

Because of the size of the bicycle hand brake and stock hydraulic clutch, placement of those took a little time to find that happy medium of convenience for me, I ended up with the hand brake in a position similar to the front brake and the clutch underneath it almost straight down. With the Rekluse you very seldom need the clutch; I use it mainly for fanning it coming out of corners. But in the end they both work well.

Next came testing the new set up, my main concerns besides how well it would work were, I’m a brake dragger so how will this set up handle the heat build-up since I had to take off the aftermarket extra capacity reservoir and install a sleeve where fluid is stored in the master cylinder effectively reducing the storage capacity. My other concern was if I should boil off some of the fluid the only way to fill the system was by way of the hand brake reservoir.

After the project was finished it took forever for the weather to cooperate enough before I could go anywhere to test it. The first test came at a Hare and Hound east of Fernley NV. It worked perfect for the desert race, but the real test would come in the mountains. The next test came at the Sawmill Enduro at Cow Mountain and again it worked perfect.

The advantages of having a hand and foot operated rear brake can be numerous, helping out on the sides of hills as I mentioned above is one, but there also times when I could use my right leg and foot for something other than pressing down on the rear brake lever, like when going down steep hills, or when making a right hand turn by using your right leg for something other than applying the rear brake might be more beneficial.

Anyway so far I’m totally happy with way the system works and it took virtually no time to adapt to it, so never let it be said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Doug

#21J