Quote:
Originally Posted by benb
I mentioned those combinations because a bunch of the big bike manufacturers frequently put good levers on a bike and then put "meh" calipers on it to hit a price point.
It's gotta be the worst place they can cheap out on a bike since it's one of the biggest items that can contribute to safety. Downgrade the cranks or the rear derailleur instead since those have little effect on performance or safety. (Except they're probably trying to hit a mass target at a price point and the cranks are a big delta in mass whereas the cheaper brakes probably don't change the mass of the bike much)
It's a pet peeve of mine.
The thing with Cantis, etc.. is that we're all just stuck with it. Shimano/SRAM/etc.. somehow decided the solution is to get us to buy new bikes with well matched Hydro disc setups instead of just making some road brifters that work really well with Cantis/V-brakes. I'm one of the people who crap on Cantis/V-Brakes around here but it's not the calipers fault, those exact same brakes work great if you switch to a flat bar setup and use MTB levers that are designed to work with them. The newer shimano levers do work a little better but they're still nowhere near as good as the MTB levers. It's gotta be a cost thing AFAICT because the issue is a STI lever that worked flawlessly with Cantis/Vs would probably no longer work with normal road calipers. So instead we get slightly changed STI levers that still work great with road calipers and work "OK" with Cantis and Mini-Vs.
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Agree with all of this. Even if cheapo brakes are safe (and I think 99.9% of the time they're perfectly adequate), it's deeply irritating to have an otherwise beautifully riding bike with squishy brakes. Every single time I hit the levers, it makes me feel like I got hosed.