Upgrading brakes?

E

ermsamermsam

Dirt Disciple
As I think about swapping from my all weater mtb commuter to my champion mondial as the weather gets better (optomistic). I rode it today and really noticed HOW much worse the 1978ish brakes are, compared to the vbrakes. I thought, "this is a bit daft: father of 2 rolling around with 30 year old brakes (Shimano 600, though I do have some Dura Ace from the same period also)".

Would upgrading the calipers to eg. double pivot instead of single pivot be enough, or will aero levers instead of non aero also offer improvement?
Thanks for your thoughts.
 
Apparently Dual Pivot offer noticeably better braking than single pivot but I'm not so sure.

Personally I'd upgrade the brake blocks and cables and I reckon you'll be there.

I reckon standard levers should offer better braking than aero because the cable route is more natural, could be talking out my rear end though....

You may also notice better braking with newer rims.
 
With dual pivot I run out of tyre before I run out of brake - I can't say that's true for single. Steel rims without modern braking surfaces can also impede your impeding. As the other guy says though, start with brake blocks are go from there....
 
For me, modern cables made a world of difference, also modern levers (well, 1995 RSX) were hugely better than old Weinmanns.
I was surprised that the old Weinmann centrepulls (with the dinky straddle cable) seemed fine, and decent brake blocks put the icing on the cake (KoolStop or Aztec would be my choice).
 
Modern levers and cables work well with the old GB Sveltes on my Moulton Mk3, would be scary with some old style levers though.

I was surprised how good some old callipers work with in conjunction with modern levers generally as I have a Holdsworth that has this sort of combination as well as the Moulton.

Not as good as a disc but if set up properly safe and efficient.
 
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