New to the forum, and cycling. Need some guidance.

[HovR]

I was told I would be able to mount the brake behind the forks due to the loads of room back there. Are their ill effects from mounting them this way? I.e. brakes binding or something of that sort?

It is possible to mount the brake caliper behind the fork, but it is very dependent on the type of brake caliper. Your current calipers are the centre pull type - Due to the style of cable routing you won't be able to place these behind the fork.

You'll have more of a chance of fitting the brake behind the fork crown using a side pull caliper. With these you have two options, either the older single pivot style, or the more modern dual pivot style.

You may have trouble finding a modern dual pivot caliper with long enough drop/reach (distance from the mounting point to the lowest point a brake pad can be mounted), although this style would be preferable as they are easier to centre and have more braking power. With this style you will also have to in most cases drill out either the front or back of the fork crown (depending on where you mount it) to 8mm to accept the more modern recessed nut fitting.

Single pivots on the other hand are slightly harder to centre, and have slightly less braking power, however are often available with longer drop/reach to suit older style frames. Single pivots aren't used much anymore, so you may have to buy in NOS condition or second hand.

The other thing worth considering is whether the brake caliper will restrict steering. As you can see in the image below the caliper has a taller section to accept the brake cable. With the caliper mounted on the back of the fork crown this may contact with the down tube, which could possibly damage your frame or brake caliper if the two collide!

Before deciding on a brake caliper you should measure your frames drop (from the mounting bolt hole to the rim) as shown in the 'Reach' section of the article I linked to above.

I'd suggest that brake cable routing would also be sub-optimum with the caliper mounted behind the fork, possibly adding a little more cable friction. To be honest, in your position I think I'd just buy a modern dual pivot caliper (if you can find one with long enough drop) and mount it to the front of the fork crown.

 

[Oddbot]

I'm a fabrication kind of person so I'll most likely copy a current design and machine it out of billet aluminum and adjust the specs for my specific application. For this build I'm probably going to make as much as I can In house like the crank set, exc.

I wonder If I can design a hydraulic brake system with stainless braided lines too. This would fix the binding cable problem.

Also I was told that a rear brake would be redundant on a fixed gear. Is this true?

 

[Pennine-Paul]

It's down to personal preference,I never use a rear brake,Sheldon Brown
reckons it can even be dangerous to use one as you can lock up the rear wheel.
You certainly like a challenge,designing a hydraulic system to fix binding
You've only got about 6 inches of outer on your front brake,that's never going to bind

 

[Oddbot]

I've been told by a good friend that MTB guys run hydraulic so a lot of design time has been knocked out for me. And yes I'm a man who like a a challenge as long as its within reason and my capability to succeed.

 

[Oddbot]

Well I'm positive I have a addiction problem. Picking up another mule this coming Thursday. It's a Columbia charger circa 1976.

 

[Oddbot]

Muwhahahahaa I just got my hustle on and sold a ton of car parts. Can you say I'm about to dump a lot of cash this week to finish the azuki super bee and get started on the columbia charger srt2.

Edit: also my front wheel is bigger than my rear is this bad or ill advised?

 

[Old Plodder]

Different sized wheels would be rather odd looking, but if the brakes work & you don't mind two different sizes, no worries.

Bikes (Sports/Road types) used to have 27" wheels but now have 700c. what that means is they are either 630mm or 622mm across the rim shoulder, & that is how the tyre & tubes are measured.

With regard to going hydraulic, Magura (I think that's how it's spelt) used to make a caliper type.

Of course, if you want to do some brazing, you could have disc brakes.

 

[Oddbot]

I was going with disk brakes in the front. I'm going to buy a 700 for the front too and extending down the brakes seems like a hassle. Plus this is just personal opinion but I think that disk brakes look cool. I was going to find a used set from a MTB and adapt them over to mine.

Also thanks for explaining why 700 is called that. I never did figure it out

 

[HovR]

A few things to consider with disc brakes, especially converting a MTB set to fit a road bike.

Your current fork wasn't designed to have the braking forces down near the hub. Modern disc forks are built up to withstand the higher braking forces that disc brakes generate, where as an older fork isn't and may flex or even fail.

If you're putting mountain bike levers on road handle bars the diameter of the clamp against the diameter of the bars may present issues, although as older bars tend to be narrower in diameter you could possibly get away with it. Short brake levers are preferable so that the lever action isn't restricted by the bends in the bars, especially for narrow bars.

If you don't mind going with cable actuated disc brakes it would be worth looking at the Avid BB7 road discs, as these will be compatible with most modern road brake levers. If you're wanting to use hydraulic brakes you're pretty much stuck with adapting mountain bike levers to fit, or using a cable to hydraulic converter (such as the TRP Parabox) with road levers.

Hope some of that helps!

 

[Oddbot]

Ditching the idea about hydraulic brakes after the guys at my local bike shop talked some sense into me lol.

Here is the latest haul of parts I just bought. 16t rear sprocket, lock ring, front brake, chain, chain breaker, and gorgeous yellow cork handle bar wrap.

Edit: the thing I really like the most about getting into bikes is that I have several local shops to go to. Unlike cars where the only local shop is a total shoot hole with a massively lazy owner who gets nothing done.

 

[HovR]

Sensible choice! You'll also want to consider a new brake cable if you don't have one already.

If you haven't wrapped bars before, one piece of advice which I found most of the guides didn't stress enough is the amount of tension you need to put on the bar tape when wrapping it. If you don't put a decent amount of tension on it won't conform to the bars properly and you'll get horrible creases etc especially around the bends in the bar. Just be careful not to pull too hard and break the tape!

 

[Oddbot]

Here's my second go re-wrapping it. I still feel like I'm getting the rotations to close to each other. But my friend told me it looks good.

 

[HovR]

It's looking pretty good! If you're running out of tape at that point then the rotations may be a little close together, but the actual wrap looks to be nice and neat. I found this video to be pretty good, especially in showing how to finish the wrap at the top of the bar.

Wrapping bars is a little bit of an art, but once you've done it a few times it's no problem. I know when I wrapped my first set of bars I ordered two sets of tape so if I completely messed one up I could start again!

One key note though.. Don't forget the brake lever(s), as they have to go on before the tape!

 

[jim55]

one thing iv learnt about wrapping bars (i dont take all the sticky backing off therefore its not adhered to the bars just at the ends i remove it ,i find it helps every few rotations to grip the tape and rotate it around the bar in the direction ur wrapping (obv )it gets it a good bit tighter,and neater all round,with it being wrapped tighter and stuck at either end itl b solid and wont move ,iv done a few recently and this method works really well and if u need to u can unwrap it and try again its a far neater job

 

[Oddbot]

Yeah I only wrapped one side to see how it would go and left the other side where the brakes going for later.