June 15, 2011

IRD Switchback

They alway come in pairs...

As i wrote before i'm a bit of a nut when it comes to the component designs of a company called IRD or Interloc Racing Design. Especially the brakes are very well thought out and are very powerful to use. Already owning the Rotary and the Widget brakes the third one, the Switchback, was still missing. So you can understand how happy and amazed i was when not one but two of them popped up on eBay. One was a later version which, like the Widget, was drilled and shiny and the other an early version in black without the holes but including an IRD brakebooster. I straight away bid on both and won the early black version. 

The idea of the Switchback is to apply the brake power via a wire that is wrapped around two small wheels which are fixed to the brake arms. When pulling the brake-cable up, applying the brake, the wire around the two small wheels will make them rotate so that they will push the brake arms towards the rim. The wire will also slip around the small wheels pushing the arms together.