V - Brake evolution ? an unlikely original source

[Woz]

I always thought the genius with the V-brake was the noodle if anything. That short plumbing off-cut a major problem solver, because let's be honest the arms are not radical per say. Starting to think now though that the real genius was to move away from the short pull lever to allow for a complete new rim brake system to work on the millions of legacy frames with cantilever bosses.

When I bought my first V-brakes they were Tektro Parallel Push (RBP?) costing a small fortune and were sold as a complete brake set with levers as an upgrade. For as long as I have been on this site I have never seen a pair of them, I think they were one of the first V-brakes on the market.

Some half arsed research indicates that MAFAC specified the lower boss position in 1948 with dimensions and specific braze-ons in their catalogues for their new fangled cantilevers. I guess in USA the specification was altered for wider 26" wheels, but I have no idea if such a standard for boss placement actually exists or was a case of copying from one frame to another in the early days of experimentation. Easy to understand too that an evolved rim brake system would favour a lower pivot point with telescopic suspension forks starting to appear.

 

[Woz]

 

[Woz]

 

[joglo]

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if these are your first V-Brakes you are referring, i think those are rather very late 90ies-ish.

The exact same model with the bit iconic parallelogram was also sold from Corratec labled as zzyzx, their home-brand for a while, at some year 2000 models, or also from Point.


Obviously a bit of a copy from the XT BR-M739 V-brakes introducing the parallelogram for keeping the brake pad angle parallel to the rims.
Not sure if the Tektro, zzyzx, Point, etc. have been also causing same troubles and squeaking noise as the XT

 

[Woz]

Yes, you are right - at a rough guess I would have bought them around 1998, so about the same time as XT.

They were actually pretty good out of the box, but after years of use the tension plate would loose it's springy-ness so you had to mess about removing, flipping and swapping around the tension plates.

Did Shimano / Tektro actually make a simple V-brake in the beginning or did they go straight for Parallel Push to avoid Patent disputes?

 

[hamster]

The M600 was the original IIRC, without the parallel push wotsits.

 

[Woz]

The M600 was the original IIRC, without the parallel push wotsits.

Ah, OK. 1995 according to this.

https://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=74625&g2_serialNumber=1&g2_fileName=br-m600+bl-m600.jpg

 

[focomat 1c]

Edit: I've added a link using Google translator, hopefully this works

In case you have not noticed ' joglo ' has added a new photo to his original post which shows the Honda without the fairing

Also an interesting piece ( now translated ) regarding Florian Wiesmann and his innovative early design of ' Wie ' ( V ) brake

 

[focomat 1c]

Hopefully this photo will give a better idea of the proportions of this incredibly neat 50cc twin cylinder motorbike
which did so much to promote the use of small multi cylinder engines in motorcycles for years to come

 

[Max Mudroom]

Interesting topic, thanks for posting. Like all good developments when the V-brake came out it seemed so obvious I wondered why no-one had thought of doing it before.

An important part of Shimano's V-brake was at the lever end - the cable pull was different to existing MTB cantilevers and the adjustable sliding pivot (is it called servo-wave?) in the lever increased power dramatically over other systems available at the time. So it is not just about the parallel pull design of the calipers themselves. Would be interesting to know if that early motorcycle design you found pulls a different amount of cable, too, then it may well be the inspiration behind V-brakes.