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My first experience of V Brakes was on my mate's Kona, around 1995 or 96. I rode down my parents driveway (a slope but not super steep), tried to scrub off a tiny bit of speed and went straight over the bars. Mightily impressed with them compared to cantis.
I've never fallen off from clipless pedals so I guess this was my moment. In fairness I didn't know much about Vs and my mate didn't tell me how strong they were/are.
tallsam
@Paradroid
Bit late to the party.
Bit of v-brake history.
When they first came out in XTR there where so many over the bars crashes as XTR's where a bit more powerful than standard v-brakes (due to the pad linkage system) this mostly being in the states, this lead to shimano shipping bikes/levers preset in the L position for low power and a small plastic tab wedged into the lever which had to be removed to allow the H position for full power, so any lawsuits would mean the user had selected full power so any crash was there fault.
Going from canti's to full power XTR was a bit like having someone shove a stick in your front wheel at speed :) took a while for people to work out v-brakes work very well.
On the shimanos it was a power adjuster, i have some Dia-compe MX levers and it is intended to switch the levers between v-brakes and canti/calpiers.