Velo orange Grand Cru Zeste Canti Brakeset...Feedback please

[cxboy]

Hi..Has anyone tried these ?? They sure look nice !!

[coelacant]

Cyclocross Mag. had a review on them recently- they liked them.
I have them on my 650B dirt/road L'avecaise. They have decent stopping power and v.g. modulation. You'd need to play around with the straddle cable length a bit. Generallly the shorter the more power which I found true for me. Their power reminds me of the old Mafac Tandem canti's paired with Koolstop pads, primitive looking but stop surprisingly well.
I know VO claims longer straddle works for them but that might not work for you. The mag review ran them short, so did the Rabobank guy and maybe Katie too.
Before these, I had TRP CX 9 and Avid Ultimate, like these better. The bike goes down some pretty sketchy trails from time to time and I need brakes that work. Straddle cables have been shorten more since the photos were taken.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7118/7623542912_2847d7c94b_z.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8010/7623539866_f4c79ba11c_z.jpg[/url]

[559Rando]

Woah! Nice L'Avecaise.
I'm a little put off by the straddle attachment that VO uses (used?) after reading Fred Blasdel's experience.
IIRC, he has fairly lengthy documentation 'across the hall' and here's a link to an abbreviated take on the design flaw:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rcog/I8GpEyrfR-M/spoYiHCrPMEJ

[coelacant]

I saw Fred's posting and looked at the photos. I think that Mafac and TRP use the same or similar method of anchoring the straddle cable.

If you look at Fred's photo of the M4 bolt you can see that the thread end wasn't cleaned up, i.e filed or chamferred as it should have been, resulting in a sharp edge that cuts your cable as you tighten. This is a QC issue that VO should have taken care of. But it's also something you could do yourself, hey it's only your skin.

VO, TRP and others have sold countless number of brakes with this type of cable anchor since they all copied each other. If there were widespread reports of failure it would have been recalled by the CPSC by now. YMMV.