Had a crash this morning

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gzoom

Über Member
Learn the harsh way. The fact is, having been slightly unsure in my mind, I should have done some pre-work on them and checked them thoroughly.

Just to reassure you once you get some properly set up brakes you shouldn't have any worries about smashing it down hill. I've got 10 year Shimano 105 callipers, but properly setup you can see they can scrub off speed absolutely fine, this was down a 4% gradient, barely a few seconds of reasonably hard braking and I was down to sub 20km/h.

Looking at your brake setup its lucky you didn't have to test them when facing some farm traffic coming up the hill!!

img.jpg
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
As an aside, am I the only one who hates when self righteous types dive on a thread and take every detail to the N'th degree to make out that a poster is a liar, or a fraud, or is just simply wrong, but they are right and you better know it !
What's your proof of that, then?!? ;-)
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
Is that quick release on the brake correct? Pretty sure it should be pointing down on left hand side when closed, when as looking at it in the photo. Then turn clockwise to open (move brake blocks away from rim) and drop the wheel out when fixing punctures etc.
They are yes, they're Shimano R7010 calipers, it made me disconcerted at first too.
 

wafter

I like steel bikes and I cannot lie..
Location
Oxford
I will say this about dual-pivot caliper brakes. I've so far owned two sets, the no-names that were on the Scott when I got it, and a set of vintage 105s just recently installed. With drop-bar brifters, they were awful. Cleaned the rims REALLY well, slight improvement. Changed back to flat bars and appropriately-set levers. Huge improvement. Install Koolstop Salmons. Even bigger improvement. The 105s *might* have improved it a little more, but I doubt it. Basically, the new blocks on clean rims with decent levers mean I have stopping power that feels equivalent to the V-brakes on my mtb, and they are good.
This, more than anything else, has decided me against ever returning to drops, because I doubt that any drop levers are hugely better than the ones I had (Sora).
Whatever, the stopping power I now have has increased my confidence on the bike.
This might be down to just cable pull ratios which have changed on STIs over the years and as a result won't suit some calipers.. was there a bif mis-match in terms of caliper and shifter age?
 
Two more shots of the brake set up, opposite side on the front and rear drive side.

View attachment 533064

View attachment 533065
The rear looks better set up (at least the side we can see) it looks like the majority of the pad will make contact with the braking surface. The frontpad looks high at the rear and may bite the tyre.
Once pads are aligned to make contact with the braking surface (I use the 'toe out' method to stop squealing) you may need to balance them so that when they are pulled the pads on either side make contact with the braking surface at the same time. The little screw at the bottom of the brake pivot adjusts that. If one side touches first you may need to loosen its screw slightly and tighten slightly the one on the opposite side. If in doubt get a lbs to sort it. V brakes like you've got are very powerful when set up right, even in the wet, good luck :okay:
 
This might be down to just cable pull ratios which have changed on STIs over the years and as a result won't suit some calipers.. was there a bif mis-match in terms of caliper and shifter age?
No, these were the original spec for the bike. The flat bar shifters used now are fully STI-compatible.
I've used two different sets of those particular brifters and they did not match the calipers well.
 
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