Cantilever brakes with road bike levers

[ChrisW]

Apologise my English...
I have that old '92 T600 which has vintage Suntour cantilever brakes combined with drop bar levers . They don't perform very well, so, I think I'll change them for new ones.
A friend said that's it's technically not the best idea to have cantilever brakes and drop bar levers because of different cable lengths. Cantilever brake calipers need more clearance he explained.

Is it true? Found it strange that my bike always had this combination of levers and calipers.

Thanks in advance for your replies!

 

[black lightning 1987]

It was certainly common to use drop bar levers with cantis on touring bikes. There are probably some levers that work better with cantis than others. I will have to look at my bikes and see what combinations I have. Are you going to be using down tube shifters? If you want better braking you might consider mini V (linear pull) brakes. I'm using Tektros with Campagnolo Ergo levers on at least one of my cyclocross bikes.

 

[ChrisW]

I have a pair of unused Shimano Tourney 3 x 7 drop bar shifters that I had in mind for the upgrade. They're not the best quality shifters, but should work better than the old downtube levers. It's an experiment, but think it's worth a try.

 

[black lightning 1987]

Tourney levers should work fine on your bike. It might be worth a try to just put some new pads/shoes on the SunTour brakes and see if that helps the braking. Dia Compe and Kool Stop pads are fairly inexpensive. You can play around with the length of the straddle cable to tune them as well. Shortening the cable as much as possible should firm up the feel. If you still need better braking you could try new Shimano CX-50, Tektro CR720, or Genetic CX cantilever brakes, or the Genetic or Tektro mini Vs.

https://www.universalcycles.com/shopping/index.php?category=671

The Avid, FSA, Paul, IRD, TRP, and Velo Orange brakes are more expensive options but don't seem to get ratings much higher than the low cost models. Perhaps that's partly due to people having higher expectations for them.

I did check my bikes. One of my Cannondale CX bikes has Coda Mini Vs (likely made by Tektro) with Shimano 105 STI, the other two have Campagnolo Ergo levers with Tektro RX5 mini Vs. My Soma Double Cross has Campagnolo Ergo levers with Avid Shorty 4 cantilevers and my Serotta CX bike has Tektro levers with Paul Neo Retro cantis. All those combinations work fine for me but the local geography is not very demanding on brakes. We do have some 10% grades but they are short in length.

 

[rickpaulos]

yeah, fresh brake pads will certainly help. 28 years on original pads is plenty of time for them to dry out and harden and lose grip. new pads would be a low cost repair item. There are some new high-tec compounds too. Kool Stop makes some that have a lot more grip and some have 2 or 3 different materials for different weather conditions. You can flat file the braking surface of old pads to get to fresher material. Also remove any bits of aluminum rim embedded in the pads. Cleaning the sides of the rims can help too.

Brake levers fall in to 2 categories of leverage. V-brake and everything else. V-brake levers have more cable pull (less leverage). There aren't exact dimensions on the different brands/models of levers. More like ranges. Canti levers have about 1 inch of distance between the lever pivot point and the cable anchor point. V-brake levers have about 1.25" distance. Avid makes the very nice Speed Dial levers that allow you to adjust the cable pull leverage without tools, while you are riding. Nice levers. I have them on a couple of my bikes. A few other models of levers are bi-modal where the cable anchor point can be moved from v-brake to canti positions. Not as slick as the Speed Dial levers. Many models of canti's are adjustable so you can change the leverage. Raise the cable yoke and you get more leverage. You can trade off leverage for quick action. The later Shimano brakes have fixed length yoke cables that are available in different lengths.

Using a v-brake lever on canti's means the pads move to the rim quickly but you don't have the leverage to stop.

Using normal levers (canti) with v-brakes often means the lever bottoms out on the handlebars before you can stop.

I've removed canti brakes from most of my personal bikes. V-brakes are usually much easier to work on and don't stick out as much leaving more room for panniers on the touring bikes.

Tektro makes a couple models of drop bar levers specifically for v-brakes. More cable pull, less leverage. I put a pair on my road touring bike when I changed to v-brakes.

 

[rickpaulos]

I have a pair of unused Shimano Tourney 3 x 7 drop bar shifters that I had in mind for the upgrade. They're not the best quality shifters, but should work better than the old downtube levers. It's an experiment, but think it's worth a try.

I put those levers on a Klein I rebuilt a couple years ago. They worked well on that vintage aluminum frame with it's 7 speed spacing. Those levers were a welcomed step backwards from Shimano. The STI levers came out when Shimano was at the 8 speed and kept going from there. It took a couple of decades for them to sell the 3x7 sti levers. When I got this Klein, it had friction shift thumb shifters on the top of the drop bars and mismatches on every part on the bike. It had parts from 4 decades and nothing was working well together.

 

[ChrisW]

Thank you for your replies! Much appreciated!

 

[rickpaulos]

Here is an example of Tektro mini V brakes with a cable pull multiplier (Travel Agent) on a tandem with Ultegra 9 speed sti levers.

 

[black lightning 1987]

You shouldn't really need the Travel Agent with mini Vs. The shorter arms require less cable pull compared to regular MTB V brakes.