4th hand cable puller

[Audax67]

^^^ I just put the brake on then tighten an old pedal strap round it.

WRT the El Cheaperone cable puller, I have one and dislike it: cable masher would be a better name.

[pete75]

A third hand tool clamps the brake pads onto the rim.

Interesting. So you need one of those devices as well as the 4th hand tool. The pair of them seem like solutions looking for problems.

Nah you don't need both - third hand tool is more old skool was used more for caliper/centrepull brakes -

3rd hand.JPG

if you clamp the blocks onto the rim you can fiddle around with the cable clamp with your hands.

4th hand achieves similar thing in a different way by pulling the cable and holding it in place while you fiddle about with the cable clamp. I do think that 4th hand can be quite useful especially on brakes with heavy spring tension.

Yep - and I suppose they're especially useful for people lacking in hand strength of which there must be an increasing number in these days of sedentary work. Not a new phenomena though - in the mid seventies three of us had Norton Commando motorbikes. One complained the clutch on his bike was hard work. We tried it and thought it no different to ours with which we had no problems. When a fair came to our local market town it had a machine for measuring grip strength. The guy with problems registered just over 100lbs grip and we were both about 200lbs - so difficulties with clutch were caused by him having weak hands. He worked in a bank we both worked on a farm. Must admit though 40 odd years later when I tried a grip test could only register 70kg so hand strength not much over 2/3rds what it was - see what comes from sitting in an office all day instead of doing real work....