Parking Brake and service time

This morning I headed over to my local Home Depot for an M8 lock-nut to replace the one I lost when moving the seat to a more reclined position. Let me not jump ahead without giving you all some background.  For a while I have felt that I would like to get my seat to be in a more reclined position. I haven't attempted this do to the amount of drilling needed to the seat.  Well I got up enough nerve this morning to attempt the modification. First I measured 1" from each existing hole up higher on the seat and marked the positions. That done I drilled the seven holes needed. Four holes for the actual seat mounts, one hole for the fender and two more holes for the neckrest and rack mounting. After drilling all the holes but the two for the neckrest while the seat was still attached to the frame, I then removed the seat and drilled the remaining two holes for the neckrest. Next I remounted the seat using the original bolts and the new holes, moving the seat forward at the front and more reclined.  The reason I choose 1" is that where the holes must be drilled the seat is reinforced but moving farther up I was not on the reinforced portion of the seat any longer. I next tightened down the bolts snugly, and that is when I realized that one lock-nut was missing and one was very loose.  I bought the new lock-nut (Stainless Steel) and a set of metric combination wrenches and tightened those final bolts. I took a short test ride and everything seems fine and more more front slippage.

Today I realized that when I replaced the Techro brake levers with the original Avid levers I lost my parking brake buttons.  I have tried many different methods over the years to prevent the trike or bike from rolling, and haven't found something that met my visual expectations as well as being functional. I did a Google search (www.froogle.com) to look for a suitable product and found found the BikeBrake® and it looked like it would be perfect.  The little band cost $2.99 including shipping, so I took a leap of faith and ordered one. Here is a link to the company web page. BikeBrake Below is a photo of it in use.

Photo courtesy of BikeBrake.

After I receive the product I will post my thoughts about it.