Takingabreak
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What a great thread. Come on, put that friday beer down and get the brakes fitted 
I'm building a Ridgeback 603 for some reason
lewisflex
Dirt Disciple
What a great thread. Come on, put that friday beer down and get the brakes fitted
Yesterday, I'd rather planned to do the brakes tonight. Then this morning I woke up with a cold which I decided to sleep off after a vitamin C megadose and definitely planned to not do the brakes until I felt better. In and out of consciousness all day but...given the nice replies here I headed down the shed tonight and got the front one hooked up, then got bored of my nose running everywhere and gave up.
These are some Tektro cantilever brakes which came with my Proflex 854. When building that bike I replaced them with M739 V-brakes, because I like having good brakes. But now that I have one bike with good brakes I don't need another ??? some logic goes here idk
Anyway, these are cool. I'm using modern Kool-Stop pads and Jagwire cables to give me half a chance. And I'm using the Shimano link wire that came with the bike. It doesn't look cool, but it is a fundamentally good design.
Unfortunately I think two of the front-mount adjustable springs from this set of brakes are knackered. I'll take a closer look at that tomorrow and see if I'll have to rethink this setup or somehow find a replacement for the springs.
lewisflex
Dirt Disciple
It was 1990, give or take I don't remember, when the news of revolution hit the air
The girls hadn't even started taking down our posters when the boys started cutting off their hair
The radio stations all decided angst was finally old enough it ought to have a proper home
Dead fat or rich nobody's left to b*tch about the goings on in self destructive zones
Here's how it sits as of like just now. You'll notice there are no rear brakes. Turned out the springs for the cantilevers are in fact done for as I suspected in the last post. I THINK I have a solution for this problem, which will also solve it for all those other brakes that have the spring mounted on the front face and which have two flats for adjusting the tension with a spanner. I'll let you know if that works out, and if it doesn't work out I'll just quietly edit this and pretend it never happened.
Purple neoprene was definitely the wrong choice of material for the seat. It has all the qualities I want EXCEPT if it so much as exists in the same room as some oil it'll get in there and it'll be in there forever. I did get that Planet-X saddle mentioned earlier in the thread. I'll probably put that on in the photos to make it look nice and then put the Setlaz seat on when I actually use it because it's soooo comfy. ;D
Here are some more bits that are on it, and a little commentary on some things I used to know. Those are things I knew off the top of my head in the mid 90s, and I'm rediscovering them as I'm doing this build.
It has a Shimano STX chainset (also, red anodised bolts, because it's the 1990s). I didn't do it for budget reasons; I did this because it's straight up my favourite looking chainset. The thing I used to know is that the outer chainring on Shimano chainsets got smaller around 1994. The earlier front mechs designed for larger outer chainrings don't really work well on these; there's no position on the seat tube that both gives the correct (tight) clearance on the outer chainring and doesn't interfere with the chainstay. I bought a nice M730 for this build to sort-of-match the rear, but it turns out I can't use it. There's a period LX one on there for now.
Here's a nice rear mech.
In that photo is also the rear cassette. The thing I used to know is that there were 7-speed HG cassettes, and for a brief period there were IG 7-speed cassettes too. You cannot put an HG cassette on an IG freewheel because they are 0.5mm off in thickness. And all the cassettes you can buy these days are HG. I could have spaced it out with a 0.5mm, and intended to, but the spacers I bought were total garbage and went immediately to the scrap pile.
But the other thing I used to know is that XT shifters can just about use an 8 speed sprocket using the "secret" 8 speed notch. That means that the spacing on the other 7 gears is close enough to 8 speed that you can get away with it...so what I could do, and did, was to take an 8 speed cassette, and remove the bottom gear to make it a 7 speed.
Here's a generic Kalloy seat post. I don't know how old it is. Mine still had its packaging. I'm pretty sure I had a post identical to this back in the day. Maybe I'd have liked something a bit fancier on this bike, but the options for 26mm posts are rather limited and this one is good enough until the right thing shows up.
Anyway despite the lack of rear brakes I took it for a careful spin. Seems to work fine and isn't too small for me as I feared. I might have misunderstood the condition of the headset while looking at it. It looked perfect, but currently I have a choice between either the steering being too tight or of having back-forth wobble, implying that something is actually worn out. So maybe this is going to get replaced soon (and I don't know what with; the options are limited for 1 inch threadless so maybe I'll just get a new FSA).
The girls hadn't even started taking down our posters when the boys started cutting off their hair
The radio stations all decided angst was finally old enough it ought to have a proper home
Dead fat or rich nobody's left to b*tch about the goings on in self destructive zones
-- Drive-By Truckers, "Self Destructive Zones"
Here's how it sits as of like just now. You'll notice there are no rear brakes. Turned out the springs for the cantilevers are in fact done for as I suspected in the last post. I THINK I have a solution for this problem, which will also solve it for all those other brakes that have the spring mounted on the front face and which have two flats for adjusting the tension with a spanner. I'll let you know if that works out, and if it doesn't work out I'll just quietly edit this and pretend it never happened.
Purple neoprene was definitely the wrong choice of material for the seat. It has all the qualities I want EXCEPT if it so much as exists in the same room as some oil it'll get in there and it'll be in there forever. I did get that Planet-X saddle mentioned earlier in the thread. I'll probably put that on in the photos to make it look nice and then put the Setlaz seat on when I actually use it because it's soooo comfy. ;D
Here are some more bits that are on it, and a little commentary on some things I used to know. Those are things I knew off the top of my head in the mid 90s, and I'm rediscovering them as I'm doing this build.
It has a Shimano STX chainset (also, red anodised bolts, because it's the 1990s). I didn't do it for budget reasons; I did this because it's straight up my favourite looking chainset. The thing I used to know is that the outer chainring on Shimano chainsets got smaller around 1994. The earlier front mechs designed for larger outer chainrings don't really work well on these; there's no position on the seat tube that both gives the correct (tight) clearance on the outer chainring and doesn't interfere with the chainstay. I bought a nice M730 for this build to sort-of-match the rear, but it turns out I can't use it. There's a period LX one on there for now.
Here's a nice rear mech.
In that photo is also the rear cassette. The thing I used to know is that there were 7-speed HG cassettes, and for a brief period there were IG 7-speed cassettes too. You cannot put an HG cassette on an IG freewheel because they are 0.5mm off in thickness. And all the cassettes you can buy these days are HG. I could have spaced it out with a 0.5mm, and intended to, but the spacers I bought were total garbage and went immediately to the scrap pile.
But the other thing I used to know is that XT shifters can just about use an 8 speed sprocket using the "secret" 8 speed notch. That means that the spacing on the other 7 gears is close enough to 8 speed that you can get away with it...so what I could do, and did, was to take an 8 speed cassette, and remove the bottom gear to make it a 7 speed.
Here's a generic Kalloy seat post. I don't know how old it is. Mine still had its packaging. I'm pretty sure I had a post identical to this back in the day. Maybe I'd have liked something a bit fancier on this bike, but the options for 26mm posts are rather limited and this one is good enough until the right thing shows up.
Anyway despite the lack of rear brakes I took it for a careful spin. Seems to work fine and isn't too small for me as I feared. I might have misunderstood the condition of the headset while looking at it. It looked perfect, but currently I have a choice between either the steering being too tight or of having back-forth wobble, implying that something is actually worn out. So maybe this is going to get replaced soon (and I don't know what with; the options are limited for 1 inch threadless so maybe I'll just get a new FSA).
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lewisflex
Dirt Disciple
WELL THEN. This might save someone else some pain in future, or maybe I'm just telling you things that you know already and never got written down. For context, Here are the springs on my Tektro RBP cantilever brakes (I think that's what they are anyway).
As you can see, they mount on the front. of the brake, bypassing the spring holes in the cantilever mounts entirely. To adjust the spring tension, you slacken off the M6 mounting bolt, turn the housing/adjuster with a 13mm spanner, and hold that tension when you tighten up the M6 mounting bolt again.
This is a pretty good design. I think Kona Curves and Dia-Compe 998s have the same thing. But two of these housing/adjusters on mine were broken in slightly different ways; both no longer held the spring properly to allow adjustment.
Anyway: The solution is to buy some cheap U-brakes.
These were £12.99 on Amazon. Elsewhere, I would guess that these "Oxford" U-brakes would work as well, and if you want to get really fancy you could get some Dia-Compe 996 U-brakes. It seems a bit of a waste to buy this just to throw away most of it, but I got some spare emergency brake pads (for my V braked Proflex) and a shiny new pinch bolt and some random M6 hardware out of it, so that's almost a reasonable deal.
All we want from this though, is the springs and the housings for them. They work fine on the Tektro brakes. The plastic cover (in white below) is optional; it'll get a bit squished and I'm not sure it's doing any good fitted. I might replace these with a tiny Neoprene sock if I find something suitable, when I can be bothered.
So that's solved and I now have rear brakes. And that is the bike fundamentally complete, though there's some tiny finishing touches (and the new brake levers mentioned in an earlier post in the thread) to go before I take any fancy pictures of the whole bike. ;D
