Mafac cantis

My experience of cantis is, set up well, they're practically unbeatable. Set up badly, they're useless. I have some old deore ones on my shopper/pubber and they are great, I had my lads on a rear kiddy seat and later on a Isla tagalong, and they were sufficient and I live in a hilly area.
Contrast that with I tried to install some cantis on a road,-cross bike and no matter what I did, I just couldn't get them to work effectively. In the end, as a desperate measure, I sawed off the bosses and fitted some cheap long drop dual pivots, which had the power, but poor modulation
Great info thankyou. I'll try cleaning these old cantis up and putting koolstop salmon on them and see how we go!

... or stop...
 
i had some of those, still have in a box somewhere, although they are branded Spidel. They are not comfortable, quite a bulky and squared rubber hood.
 
I assume the non aero mafac branded levers that came with the cantis are the best to use?

If you already have them, and they fit your hands (they require rather large hands), then they'll work well. But so will most other levers designed for classic side-pull, centre-pull or cantilever brakes.

A favoured 1960's combination with racers in the low countries, where no one was bothered by Italian or French sensibilities, was MAFAC brakes and Universal levers:

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In that case another pic is in order. While these cantis were popular in cyclocross, they were rarely seen on road racing bikes. One exception was Jacques Anquetil, who rode a bike fitted with them during the opening time trial of the 1961 Tour de France:

1961-06-26 - Miroir Sprint - 786A - 01.jpg

He won that TT and spent the rest of that TdF wearing a yellow jersey and braking with centre-pull brakes.
 
Several of the TdF climbing specialists used them (eg Beat Breut the Swiss rider and at least one of the Spanish specialists) and they were popular(ish) with some UK time triallists in the 70's and 80's due to light weight. Can't recollect seeing an image of Anquetil with cantis before that one. I'll have to take a closer look when perusing my stash of old mags!
 
Laurent Fingnion used cantis to save weight on his special aluminium climbing bike used for the Alpe D' Huez stage of the 1991 Tour De France, Shimano rather than Mafac though... still looks cool..👌

575679LaurentFignon1991.jpg 780974vlonew.jpg 429279avduvlorestaur.jpg
 
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