I agree with everything Steve has written but can add a few more variables to think about, along with sharing personal experience. In 45 years of adult riding and wrenching I have owned and used a lot of brakes. Currently I have Paul's Racer Ms on the Ram, Neo-Retros on the Saluki, Tecktros on the Trek and posted Racers on the Bilenky tandem, but am switching these to cantis while getting that frame powder coated. Here's what I like about each.
CP brakes sit above the fender and so the pivots stay a lot cleaner than cantis, which sit next to the wheel, below the fender. Living on a dirt road this helps reduce my clean/maintenance work. The Racer M's on the Ram have very good stoping power and offer better fender clearance than Shimano dual pivot sidepulls but not much better than old single pivots like the Campy Grand Comps. The posted racers on the tandem also offer good stopping power but it is hard to compare with a single, since the weight & distribution are so radically different. (Our tandem, loaded for inn to inn travel, weighs about 440 lbs.) The Racers are specked for 55 mm fenders but I have fit the VO 60 mm under them. The brakes are compact and travel easily when I disassemble the tandem for travel, which cantis don't do so well. However these brakes just barely open enough to clear an (actual) 38mm tire. Above that would require deflating the tire. That's why I am switching to cantis, to use a 44 mm tire. The Neo-Retros have phenomenal stopping power, the best opening, (especially with road pads instead of the long V brake pads they typically come with.) but they do get pretty grimy if you ride in a lot of rain. This doesn't affect their power but I suspect wears the pivots. I dispute the assertion that all cantis are hard to set up. There is a small learning curve with the Paul's, since the process is different but after that it is very easy and the on-line instructions are clear. I have owned Shimano and Tectro cantis, both of which were annoyingly hard to deal with. I have also owned a pair of hi profile Di-Compe's which were easy to set up but had sub-par braking power. Paul's brakes are expensive (although not as expensive as Compass) but all the wear parts are available at very reasonable prices. If I were 40 years younger and just starting to collect good road bikes, good cantis would be my first choice with maybe disks getting a look see. Michael On Monday, April 4, 2016 at 12:58:34 PM UTC-4, Steve Palincsar wrote: > > On 04/04/2016 12:27 PM, Lungimsam wrote: > > 1.Which are better for use with fork braze ons and why? For recreational > road riding. > > > > 2. Is either just fine? I'm guessing it is but the more online stuff I > read, the more overthinking results. > > > > Funny how before I started online bike reading everything about my bikes > was just fine. > > > > And in fact in many ways the correct answer is they are both just fine. > But, in some cases, you could make an argument that one or the other is > superior. For example: > > - Cantilever bosses are all pretty much the same and in pretty much the > same place, so you could switch brands of brakes if you wanted to, > whereas with centerpulls the brazed-on bosses are different from one > brand to another and their position is different, so you're committed > for live to a particular brake. Some would see that as an advantage to > cantis. The standard pivot location also means there's a wider > availability of off-the-shelf front racks, which maybe can save money. > > - Some people find cantilever brakes to be difficult to impossible to > adjust correctly. Now the fact is, "impossible" is an outright lie: > there are some skilled bike mechanics (Cycles Ed, who you might have > seen at the Peanut Tour or at Bike Virginia is fantastic) who can adjust > them just fine, but there are many local bike shop mechanics who simply > can't deal with them. By contrast, centerpulls are very easy to adjust. > > - Centerpull braze on bosses are located higher up on the fork blades > and seat stays, where the tubes are stiffer and more resistant to > bending forces than cantilevers. This means that in those > edge-and-close-to-it cases where fork blade twist under hard braking > induces brake shudder centerpulls win. It also means you can use less > stiff fork blades and seat stays with brazed on centerpulls, which > (provided they're sufficient) is also a win. Some have argued that this > also means centerpulls will always work better under very hard braking. > > - Cantilever brakes can open wider, allowing a wider tire to pass > through than centerpulls. In some cases, that can be an advantage. > > - Centerpulls can suffer from cosine error - where a worn pad swings up > past the rim brake track and contacts the tire. It doesn't take a > second for the brake pad to eat through the sidewall and cause a > blowout. Cantilever brakes can do the opposite, and swing down past the > bottom edge of the rim and fall into the spokes. At best this results > in no braking at all; at worst it can destroy the wheel. Hard call to > determine which is more frequent and which failure mode is worse. > > - There may be cost differences. The nicest currently available new > centerpull brakes (i.e., the Paul Racer and the Compass) are not cheap. > For some that may matter a great deal, although if we're talking about > custom frames that cost difference probably won't amount to much of the > total cost of the bike. > > > > > -- 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 rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
