Quote:
Originally Posted by benb
Those straddle cables probably never stretched enough to make much difference.
One of the "devil in the details" items with Cantis is that as the brake moves through it's travel the angles of the straddle change and it changes the mechanical advantage of the brake, in a negative direction IIRC. It's one of the things that makes them require careful design and setup. That is a much bigger factor than any of the cables stretching. And it's one of the design items that has been eliminated in most of the other brake types.
Rodriguez has a good point about Cantis being designed to work on road bikes and most of the others not having been designed for them, although that has changed with the recent hydraulic disc setups. V-Brakes, Mini-Vs, and some of the Mechanical Discs are all shoehorned into use with Drop bar levers without having been primarily designed for them and vise versa.
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That Rodriguez article is out of date and is wrong today with respect to V brakes. Tektro and Diacompe make V brake compatible brake levers. Current STI brake levers are long pull and work with V's. Thicker V brake pads are now sold, and I'd rather replace a V brake pads than a canti one with the unthreaded brake studs (a huge PITA). And V brakes don't squeal any worse than canti brakes do.
Where canti brakes fail is in cable hangers that flex and bend the brake cables at sharp angles, the straddle wire which has to be set at the proper length or the brake leverage is crap (plus it has the falling rate problem), the straddle cable hanger which crimps the cable with a pinch bolt or set screw causing cable damage, and a failure mode where if the brake cable breaks, the straddle wire falls onto the tire. If you have a knobby tire that's a trip over the handlebars and a face plant. If your cantis have the smooth brake shoe studs, they are a royal pain to adjust. I've had numerous canti brakes on bikes over the years and found V brakes to be a huge improvement over them.
Yes, I admit they may be a problem with clearance for fenders and with older brake levers, which may necessitate the use of cantis over V's. Tektro makes a wide range of V brakes with different length arms.