Weinmann

Hp-turbo brake

Michael Barry of Mariposa Bicycles remembers seeing the Weinmann Hp-turbo brakes when he was a kid. “Although, I’ve never seen them on a bike, and I’m not sure my dad ever did,” he says of his father, Mike Barry Sr. Within Barry Sr.’s large collection of bikes and parts was a bin of odd components. He had set them aside for a Franken-bike he had planned that he called Mike Barry’s Folly. “He had even made braze-on pieces to connect the brake to a frame,” says Michael. Barry Sr. didn’t complete his folly before his death in December 2018.

The Weinmann Hp-turbo brake was released in 1984, which was during the company’s decline. (It was most popular in the ’ 60s and ’70s.) The brake pads on the Hp-turbo each sit at the end of a cam. When a rider pulls a brake lever, the brake cable then turns the cams, moving the brake pads toward the wheel rim.

Since the Hp-turbo brakes are so hefty, Michael Barry figures they were meant for city bikes or the emerging mountain bikes of the time. “It’s a unique design,” he says. “I imagine they’d be powerful, but they are heavy and clunky, with a lot of moving parts.

They are not exactly elegant or refined.” They may have been a result of ambition, which now seems like folly.— MP