Hacks / Bodges

They're an official thing, great find though coz they're expensive and very useful!

Yeah, knew it was going to be a bargain when I found it. Got that, the set of Avid V-brakes, the fork, a cable doubler and a few other misc. bits for only a tenner 🙌

I've got a couple of spares I don't need, if anyone's after some.

Do I need on wife those fugly pulley things if I swap my cantis for mini v's? Charg Plug 1 SS, with drop bars and levers....

fugly

My beautiful bodgebike is hurt 😢

No, mini-Vs are designed for road cable pull, but they don't have quite as much stopping power or clearance as full V brakes. So no need for the adaptor if you're happy with CX-width tyres

Thanks. And your bike is a snowflake!

@mashton it does also matter what brake levers you have - Shimano have had a few different 'standards' over the years that are slightly different from the 'standards' that campag and sram have.
(not-so-)mini-Vs like a CX90 (with 90mm arms) won't be good with campag/sram but will work fine with newer shimano (mostly 10spd+). The slightly shorter CX84 (84 mm arms, similar to Tektro 926AL and Shimano) work well with all of them.

Ah right, I forgot Shimano keep changing their cable pull. Good info

FWIW, I have CX90s running with 6700 levers and they're fine albeit slightly binary. I think the CX84 were put out specifically to play nice with SRAM/Campag (CX90 had too much mechanical advantage for them) as well as tone things down a bit for the Shimano crowd. Plus added rim clearance.

More info here

I have non brifter levers. Dunno what they are. I'll check at some point.

If I remember your bike right it has Tektro RL340 levers so would work well with the CX8.4

Or, get some RL520 levers and run full V-brakes for full winning.

@mashton think I have a spare pair of both RL520 and RL340s you can have for beers/a fiver.

I also have spare RL520s

Double post.

@dsalmon, @Aroogah.

Not to jump the queue, but I'm after a set of these myself, I'd they're going. Drop us a PM, if/when they become available.

Turns out that my levers are Tektro RL340s, so all good!

Thanks guys.

Fill your boots @Jalopy-Véloist...

PM’d

Thank'ya!

Headset press done, 12mm threaded bar, 2x steel offcuts, 19mm nut and washer, grease bolt down all sorted

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Theoretically modified a brake lever to pull V-brakes. Cable pull on road levers is approximately half that on V-brakes so you need to double the cable pull. Drilled a hole from the back, looped the cable over the normal head retainer, feed it back through the normal cable exit and now it pulls twice the cable.

Haven't tested it on a bike yet, will maybe try it on Sunday.

If I were more invested in the project I would file a nice gulley/slot/thing in the cable head retainer thing so that the cable has a nice smooth run, more like a pulley. Also with a longer drill bit I could clean up the routing from the back a lot.

Should be doable with any similar road pull lever as long as there's somewhere appropriate to retain the cable head. But please don't drill out your expensive Dura Ace shifter and then come to me if it breaks

You can see the cable head wedged in next to the clamp for the bars

Would be nice for a CX-type bike or tourer to run full V brakes with brifters, though I feel the cable is going to get trashed pretty quick in this bodgy setup

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Hang on... wouldn't that double the tension or force able to be applied to the cable, but halve the cable pull? i.e. making the lever somewhat useless with V-Brakes?

No, the opposite, it pulls twice the cable with half the force. Where before there was one length of cable being pulled out by the lever there are now two, so the net result is double cable pull. Hope you can make sense of my crap diagram... If we call the distance to the pulley at rest x, each stretch of cable increases from x to x + d so net increase of 2d. It definitely seems to pull twice the cable using the old Eyeball Gauge

It's a non-destructive modification, sort of, in that if it doesn't work it can still be used as a normal road pull lever.

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@frankenbike will it pull twice as much once the lever is fitted to the bars? seems like you've only increased the distance from the original nipple location to the outer edge of the nipple holder which can only be 4/5mm? Is that enough to double the pull? good hack if it is

Did I just get lucky with mine then? Genuine question.....5700 105 levers work lovely with my old xt/Lx V brake combo.

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