Next up - brakes.
On the back there is a Suntour Roller Cam and the front had some Dia Compe 986 cantis, with Dia Compe SS-4 levers. Dia Compe were making parts for lots of people, so the first Ritchey Logic cantilevers were re-branded DC 986's and Ritchey's levers look very similar to DC SS-4s.
I saw a review of a Cannondale in around 1990 with their Force 40 brake. At the time I was doing A-level applied maths, learning about forces and pulleys so I liked the way they had managed to get more braking power from a cantilever just by adding in a simple pulley. It means that all the force from the lever goes to the brakes, rather than being split between the two brakes, much like V-brakes. Later models had some kind of cam rocker, but the first ones just had a brass pulley wheel. I can't remember the maths behind it, but it almost doubles the braking force.
I had managed to make something similar at home using a mechano pulley wheel and various bits of discarded brake bits and stuff I had lying around. It didn't last long. I probably didn't make it well enough to be safe, so went back to just using the normal straddle wire. I recently bought one of the rockers made by Tektro, similar to what Pace were using on their forks at the time, it does almost the same job and is a lot safer than my home-made version! When I fitted it, I found that squeezing the brakes would make the rocker bend under the strain, wasting any energy savings. I replaced the rather spindly mounting with a piece of 20mm aluminium tube - no more bending!
And - as Kurtis Blow said - That's The Brakes.
