I love most things about the new Outtie but I'm not too excited about the single lever brake system. Seems that would be a big disadvantage in some steep situations. Is there a way to add another lever, and if so, how big of a pain would it be to do it?

 

The single lever / all wheel braking is fantastic in steep situations! If the engine breaking on the 1000 is anything like it was on my outty 800- shouldn't be too many situations where you actually need the brakes

There is no easy way to "add brakes" to an outlander 1000 (or any atv for that matter) lots of custom fab work and components to customize. Maybe if you owned an auto cad and a tig welder.

I suggest you just get used to the single lever breaking

 

Does the outlander have a foot brake for the rear? I'm familiar with my sons Polaris sportsman where the brake handle engauges both the front and rear brakes, and I have to say that when I ride it down some nasty hills, I have the ability to stop on a dime while my friends are slipping and skidding on their quads (my DS650 included). I assume the outlander would be the same, so why would you want to seperate out the front and rear?

reguardless, I don't think it would be a serious undertaking to accomplish what you ask for. You would need to source another brake handle/master cylinder for the right side of the handlebars from a different ATV. You would need to find the junction where the front and rear brake lines split, remove the front and cap it. You want to remove the front, because the bias is already set for the rear brakes, and whatever brake handle you source for the new line will probably be for the front (two calipers in front, one in rear!) Run new lines from the now open line back to your new brake lever. The only thing I forsee is the whatever master cylinder you source is going to be set up for the byas of whatever machine it came off of, so try to find one from a simliar weight machine.

Only run flex line when you need it. You will probably need to run some hard line, but it's not that difficult to mock it up 1st with a coat hanger to get the shape, then bend up the real line. If you are lucky you can buy the hard line at a specific length (you will have to figure out) that already has the fittings installed and the ends flared, otherwise you will have to cut line, install fittings, and double flare the tube yourself, or pay a brake shop to do it for you.

 

To tell you the truth, I never gave the brake system much thought until this summer when I was coming down a super steep hill (probably in the neighborhood of 45 degrees or more, though I didn't have my inclinometer handy at the time) that was at least a mile long. It was above the tree line (9000') and it was covered in tennis-ball sized, loose rock. I was in low gear 4WD on a Kawa 650 Prairie and my uncle was also in low gear 4 WD but on a Kawa 700 BF. We each had about 80 lbs of gear on the rear racks and about 20 lbs on the front racks. Both machines had Maxxis Bighorn tires. I started down first, and quickly grabbed both brake levers out of habit. But this didn't slow me down as much as I liked. So I ground to a complete stop and then just kept it under 2 or 3 mph all the way down careful not to build up enough steam to overpower the traction.
At the bottom of the hill, I looked back up at my uncle making his way down and I could see he was going faster down the hill than I did but still managed to keep it under control. When he got to the bottom, he told me that he experimented with holding both brake levers, using just the fronts, and using just the back brakes. He said that the worst traction came from just using the rears (of course) but that holding both levers was almost as bad. He said the best was just using the front brakes only.
So, I thought I ought to try it too, so we went back up the hill and came down it one more time. This time I tried everything like he did and found that he was indeed correct. I guess the loose rock was acting like rollers when all four tires were halted. But when the rear tires were allowed to roll over the rocks instead of dragging them, the front brakes worked quite well.
At the bottom of the long hill once more, we both agreed that it was nice to have double (independent) brake levers and then it dawned on us that some machines didn't have this feature. Ever since then, I've been thinking about modding the new Can Am for this.
I know that the Can Am's engine braking is probably a bit better than the Kawas, but at some point, everybody's got to use the brakes right?

 

Whoa, that sounds like more work than I'd expected. I was hoping somebody made a kit or something that I could just buy and install. Darn it!

 

it's even more work than what he mentioned- in thought, it's easy, but in application, it would be pretty hard to get it all to work well (assuming you don't want to turn your $15k outlander into a total hack job) it would not be easy mounting a right hand master cylinder on the throttle side of the bars.

The only (best) way I can think of is if you buy the brake setup / bars off a can-am renegade. the renegade still uses 2 brake levers. It's your $$$$.

I guess I'm not understanding your issues-
using front brakes down a steep hill is a very bad idea- first, your center of gravity is already off, if you locked up your front brakes going down a rocky hill, now you're fighting the atv to remain in control- your bars will keep deflecting left & right as your front tires skid & wedge into rocks and this could cause you to to easily roll over... you should always be using your back brakes and sitting further back on the seat when descending a steep hill.
If the terrain is so lose that you're just skidding, then no matter how many brakes you have will make any difference- brakes only work when there's traction / friction between the tire and terrain.
I descend some pretty steep hills here in new england- full of mountains.
I almost always have to give it gas or the outty will pretty much stop while descending because of the engine brake.

I dunno- I'd just keep it the way the very educated and well experienced can-am engineers designed it... just my

also wanted to add- personally- I hate bighorn tires. very soft & bouncy, you have to really air them up to get any sidewall rigidity, they don't hold a bead as well as other 6ply tires- I run with about 3-4 psi, I think if you ran with anything under 6psi on a bighorn you'd roll the bead right off the rim. I'd take just about any other tire over bighorn.

 

My thought would be to see if you can get the complete brake lever and cylinder system off of a Renegade. Not sure about the 1000, but my son's Renegade has both a front and rear lever for braking. It's probably set up with the right bias that you would need. I know the Polaris single lever has a bias of about 60 front 40 rear. Not 100% sure on Can-Am. So, I'd see if you could switch over the Renegade system. Probably would be the cheapest (though not inexpensive(I know, double negetive)) and easiest way to go.

 

Onee thing you are forgetting. When you are in 4wd it doesn't matter which brake you use it affects all the wheels because of the 4wd.

 

Ah ha! The Renegade has two levers?! So Can Am has thought about this. They must feel that their sportier powerhouse bike needs double brakes. Wonder why they felt the Outtie didn't need it too? Especially since it's a heavier bike with the ability to haul more payload........

So now I gotta decide if stealing the brakes off a Reny and putting them on the Outtie now would be better than waiting to see if they put two brakes on the 2013 model................or just settling for one brake for every situation.

 

Wow, really? I thought they were great tires! They didn't bounce or ever act like they were going to come off the bead. And I really liked how much traction they provided.
In any case, they're definitely better than the bologna skins that come with most Jap bikes.