Thread: Better Braking?
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Old February 1st 20, 06:47 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Andre Jute[_2_]
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Default Better Braking?

On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 5:31:07 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 8:47:13 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/31/2020 10:21 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 12:48:29 AM UTC-8, Tosspot wrote:
On 31/01/2020 05:35, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Returning to the pivot spread: There was a time when some companies
sold plates to connect the front end of a (front) cantilever's pivot
screws, to prevent that motion. I don't remember such a thing being
sold for center pull brakes back when they were popular, but it
would probably be more useful on that type of brake.

These things?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bi...booster+plates

Yup. http://www.velo-pages.com/main.php?g...serialNumber=2 The Spence Wolf Cuptertino Bike Shrine version that was popular in the late '70s early '80s.


Huh! I hadn't seen those.

With Scott/Mathauser brake shoes/pads. All these kludges were intended to produce braking as good as a Campy NR, begging the question of why one didn't buy NR -- or even the Shimano equivalent.

Well, then as now, people bought the brakes that were attached to the
bike when they saw it on the showroom floor.

Most people are not connoisseurs. They're more affected by advertising
copy than by finely perceived differences in performance.


What advertising copy? If you were buying custom-modified Mafac brakes from Spence Wolf's shop, you were a connoisseur -- albeit one who marched to a different drummer. Spence was also responsible for launching Phil Wood and one of my favorite bikes of the era, Caylor. He then went with a lot of the PNW builders -- Merz, Rodriguez, Erickson -- and Lighthouse bikes by Tim Neenan of Santa Cruz who brought us the original Stumpjumper. Spence was kind of the Gertrude Stein of bike shop owners. I don't know if he had anything on the showroom floor that was an OTC bike.

These days, just to get advertising copy, you have to be a little bit of a connoisseur and subscribe to Bicycling or VeloNews or some other bicycle publication. The only way I know about bikes is because of my son and friends who are in the business. It is much less common to buy a bare frame these days and you are tied to a lot of OE equipment -- often proprietary -- for better or mostly worse. A lot of parts are also fit only for the showroom, like wheels. They are just bike stands on mid-fi bikes and even somewhat high-end bikes. Back in the day, a nice bike had nice wheels. You can spend $4K on a bike that has disposable wheels.

-- Jay Beattie.


You're confusing Franki-boy with an historical sequence. BTW, I agree with you, there's so much pseud**** in writing about bikes today, even an old advertising man is embarrassed by the supine vapidity of it. -- AJ
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