So, before I ponied up for my Hillborne, I purchased a Surly Cross Check about four years ago and completely "Rivendellized" it, with what at the time amounted to a Riv Build Kit: Albatross bars, Sugino triple, bar-end silver shifters, Tektro CR720 wide profile cantis and the Tektro Eclipse linear pull levers. I never thought much about it, and the brakes have performed over time, and the whole bike treated me well, even during the Ragbrai of 2012, with over 100 degree temperatures most days.
Now that I have my side pull hillborne with the lovely bigmouth side pulls and the tektro mountain levers, I find that I really love the smooth, almost buttery action of the levers and the lack of white knuckling required to get modulation out of the brakes, and have started fiddling with my old setup on the Surly. I've lowered the CR720's straddle wire hanger as low as it will go, and have double checked to make sure that the setting on the Eclipse levers is set for "non-linear pull" brakes (y'all might remember that it had two settings for the cable nipple, depending on the brakes used), but still have a sense of having to really clench the levers to white-knuckle levels to bring the bike to rest. It's not that they've ever failed, and I certainly become used to this set-up whenever I return to the Surly, but do find that I like the action of the side pulls and Mountain levers a lot more - it's like having power brakes vs floor-stompers! So, is this simply a matter of mechanical advantage, and have I likely exhausted my ability to get as much MA out of the cantis and levers, or is there anything I can do to get more leverage? I remember in the description of the CR720s they are described as having a "positiveness and crispness", and maybe that is another way of saying less mechanical advantage, and that's just how wide profile canto's behave? I did wonder if I could replace the levers, since it appears that the Eclipse levers were actually designed for linear pull brakes and maybe a poor choice? Lastly, bear with me. If there is an exhaustive post buried in the ROB, feel free to point me in the direction. I also realize I may be confusing some terminology above and using language imprecisely. I definitely don't know my applied physics! Hope all are well this morning, Alan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
