Deep drop calliper brakes

[deliquium]

Yep the TRP RG957 is an equivalent (or slightly better than) to the Shimano R650.

But not capable of a 65mm drop

Or am I missing something here? Would not be unusual

[honesty]

No, like r650's they're standard drop.

[gerrymcm]

What about brake drop bolts?
I've not used one but can't see why they wouldn't be affective unless aesthetics are a concern.
Sheldon's
http://sheldonbrown.com/home-drop.html
available commercially although not sure about the UK
http://bikeisland.com/cgi-bin/BKTK_STOR ... rodID=1709
Or simply google and see other people's DIY creations.

When I've mulled these in the past I've thought that tube/solid bar the exact size of the inside of the bottom of steerer tube would be the best solution.

[Brucey]

I'm not sure that the OP has said what levers are to be used with these brakes but that may affect the choice?

If there is a free choice of lever and deep drop side-pulls/DPs -ones that are worth having that is- are difficult to source, it is worth looking at some alternatives.

a) get some canti-bosses brazed on

b) use a hub brake

c) use centre-pull calipers

65mm brake drop is right where Mafac calipers are meant to work. IIRC it is slightly too long for the shorter Weinmann and Gran Compe models. Perhaps I have a weird sense of aesthetics but I always think that a CP caliper on a drop bolt looks better than a side-pull on a drop bolt. Most CP calipers work well enough if you set them up carefully and use decent pads.

cheers

[JohnW]

I'm not sure that the OP has said what levers are to be used with these brakes but that may affect the choice?

If there is a free choice of lever and deep drop side-pulls/DPs -ones that are worth having that is- are difficult to source, it is worth looking at some alternatives.

a) get some canti-bosses brazed on

b) use a hub brake

c) use centre-pull calipers

65mm brake drop is right where Mafac calipers are meant to work. IIRC it is slightly too long for the shorter Weinmann and Gran Compe models. Perhaps I have a weird sense of aesthetics but I always think that a CP caliper on a drop bolt looks better than a side-pull on a drop bolt. Most CP calipers work well enough if you set them up carefully and use decent pads.

cheers

I don't remember having seen things differently from you before Brucey - in fact I see you as something of an oracle, but Personally I wouldn't go along any of those roads - the Tektros do the job just fine in my experience. Your options a and b have expensive implications.

[Brucey]

well, if the OP has levers with the correct cable pull for DPs and can get some calipers that work OK, maybe that is a good solution. But my point is that it is far from the only solution, so if you can't (or won't) do the first thing there are alternatives which have not been much discussed in this thread. Some folk would choose each of those over other brakes in any event because each has its strengths and weaknesses; any of them could be considered 'perfectly adequate' or better, even.

Perhaps controversially, I suspect that the single best thing about DPs is how easy they are to set up. Almost idiot-proof in fact. Centre-pulls and cantis have more adjustments and can need considerably more care when setting up.

I've lost count of how many people have replaced old CPs (or cantis) with new DPs and suddenly found that they have working brakes again. However, a good deal of the time it seems to me that if they had put decent cables, decent brake blocks, and five minutes (rather than five seconds) into the setup of their old brakes, they could have spared themselves a lot of bother.

Tektros seem OK to me but I have found that the finish (especially on springs and bolts etc) suffers badly in our climate, and that you may as well chuck the OEM pads in the bin as use them. Could be worse though!

cheers

[JohnW]

..............you may as well chuck the OEM pads in the bin as use them. Could be worse though!

cheers

If by OEM pads you mean the Tektro pads that came with the brakeset, I'd agree - presumably for the same reason. As I said, I found that they took more shards out of the Mavic open pro rims than the Fabraxes that I normally use do. I can't say that I found them less effective because I only used on a 100 mile ride on level roads; they were never put to the test.

[Brucey]

BTW some DP (with RH cable pull and QR, price per pair unless otherwise indicated) choices include;

Tektro R369; 55-73mm, nutted fit ~ £30
Tektro R559; 55-73mm, allen key fit ~£35-£40
Alhonga ; 57-75mm, nutted fit ~£21 (left side cable pull)
Origin8 ProPulsion; 47-73mm, allen key fit (no QR) ~£140
Dia compe (for track bike, clamps to fork blades, gives enough clearance for ~25mm tyres and mudguards on any frame)~£60 each caliper.
Dia Compe BRS202; 57-75mm, allen key ~£27 each caliper
Dia Compe 806; 57-75mm, nutted fit (no QR, LH pull) ~£13 each caliper.

For a different (but more permanent) solution there are also such things as braze-on caliper brakes. For example current shimano 105 calipers (BR-5810) come in 'direct mount' option. These brakes are in essence a centre-pull caliper arm/pivot design but with a different cable actuation mechanism. Unfortunately I can't see a suitable supply of bosses anywhere, the brakes themselves will only allow a 28mm tyre max (presumably without mudguard) and there is no 'touring version' as yet. The traditional equivalent to this is to use braze-on mountings for Mafac centre-pulls. You can now buy an improved version of these brakes (in braze-on form) from compass bicycles. These brakes will allow tyres up to around 40mm (or a little more) and mudguards. You can use old Mafac arms with new compass posts and bushings too.

cheers

[Rustydog]

There's some interesting opinions and ideas coming out of all this- thanks everyone. I like to keep things simple so I feel that a good pair of side pull/DP's should get the job done. I've only used one type of caliper brake and I must say I'm not a big fan so far.

They seem fussy to set up and have an undesirable (IMO) weakness whereby they rely on a cable actuating another cable rather than a cable moving a solid piece of hardware. The cable on cable design gives far too much room for play and even if you set everything up nice and tight and close you get other niggles such as brake rub even on the truest of rims. Any slackening off seems to readily lose a chunk of your pulling power . Centre pulls have a cable on cable set up but I think they do a better job via a caliper mechanism rather than cantilever.

Brucey touched upon an interesting point about the levers. I think these are often a bit underestimated in the system.In my retro building days you could often get a lever that had a little sub lever inside the main housing whereby you could put the main lever on another setting which would have the effect of changing the action of the lever so you could have more pull for less overall lever movement. This meant that you didn't have to have everything adjusted so tight up just to have good braking action.

If anyone knows of any levers that still have this facility/capability then I'd be very interested to hear. They can be modern or retro but also non Aero too.

[Brucey]

cantilevers vary in the caliper MA (and therefore pad to rim clearance too) by at least a factor of three depending on the design and the setup; you can't really generalise about the many different versions on the basis of one or two (possibly dodgy) examples.

Some of the best brakes (of any kind) have a variable MA (because the geometry changes) through the stroke; sometimes this is a bad thing but other times it isn't; some canti variants have this feature and use it to good effect.

There are plenty of flat bar levers that can be adjusted to give different lever MA values but in dropped bars this is very rarely the case. For some years shimano produced dropped bar levers with an automatically varying MA. In these levers (called super SLR or servo wave or something) a small roller altered the MA between low and high about half-way through the lever stroke; these were fitted to the final groupsets that came with single-pivot calipers IIRC, but ultimately these levers are not ideal with most DP calipers; they don't quite pull enough cable. If you can set them up and use them safely, they do offer ferocious power though, (in those few minutes before the lever comes back to the bar...)

Anything meant for use with DP calipers pulls more cable at lower MA and as time has gone on they have yet further increased this effect; current STIs pull about 10% more cable than earlier ones for the first generation of DP calipers.

So with dropped bar levers of any kind you are (barring the use of travel agents etc) kind of stuck with a small range of caliper MAs that are going to work OK, so choose carefully!

cheers

[robc02]

I have been using Tektro R559 DPs with Tektro R200 levers for a couple of years on my winter commuter. The original pads were replaced first by some Fibrax wet weather types and are now using BBB pads (blue ones - these I think). The performance is fine - a large improvement over the Weinmann 730s previously used (a pity as I preferred the look of the Weinmanns!!).

The calipers were given to me and the previous owner had replaced some of the bolts with stainless ones. However, the remaining originals rust easily, as do the springs.