Robin Hubert wrote:

One of our esteemed experts previously suggested that a cantilever
equipped bike without bbl adjusters is dangerous.

"If there are no adjusting barrels provided, the bike is dangerous and
defective. Nobody should accept such incompetence."

I'm baffled by this. Inconvenient, maybe, but dangerous? Defective?

Drop bar levers tend to have slightly more mechanical advantage than
typical upright-style levers, and those are the ones that lack built-in
barrel adjusters.

Cantilever brakes can work very well with these, but the adjustment
becomes more critical.

Any rim brake should have some provision for taking up the cable slack
as the brake shoes wear, with no tools required.

If such adjusters are omitted, there's a much greater chance of the bike
being riddden with incorrectly adjusted brakes as the pads wear. This
is dangerous, expecially in wet conditions.

Even if the rider does take the trouble to re-adjust the cable at the
anchor bolt, when new shoes are installed the cable will then need to be
loosened again the same way, and now there will be a crimped, formerly
clamped section of cable as part of the working cable. This is much
more likely to break than a section of cable that has not been subject
to repeated clamping and re-clamping to accomplish the fine adjustment
that _should_ have been done with the barrel adjuster.

Sheldon "Perhaps I Should Have Said 'Mono-Buttocked'" Brown
+--------------------------------------------+
| Most people would sooner die than think; |
| in fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell |
+--------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
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