You are reading a single comment by @polybikeuser and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@polybikeuser
On separate bikes I have (in black) a pair of Mavics, a pair of Zero Gravitys and a pair of Dia Compe Grand Compe 9000 Titanium, all in their own way look great. The Mavic's are great, I don't know if the leaf springs actually make them more responsive or whether it's just psychosomatic, but I love em. I use them with Mavic Mektronic levers. The Zero Gravity's were a pain to set up and to start with were a bit temperamental, the pads took ages to break in and I couldn’t change them for something else as the cassettes are non-standard but looked too good to ditch. Once set up and broken in they feel great and have more raw braking power than anything else I’ve used. I use these with SRAM Force levers. The Dia Compe’s have a really classic look to them and a nice finish but the titanium hardware’s been a disaster. I’ve had both pinch bolts shear so have had to replace them with stainless steel bolts, not the end of the world but a bit galling when they started out with shiny titanium bits. Maybe it’s just me but I found it tricky setting these up to get decent braking performance out of them, I didn’t try changing the standard pads for something better and this was probably a mistake. They work okay but don’t have as much “feel” as the Mavics and don’t come close to the Zero Gravitys. On the upside you can (as I did) sometimes pick them up cheap from kinetic-one on ebay, see link below;
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DC-Titanium-Brake-Calipers-Road-Racing-Triathlon-Bike_W0QQitemZ170143199108QQihZ007QQcategoryZ33503QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
oh and I use these with Profile QS2 bar end brake levers. If you’re willing to consider spending not entirely sensible sums of money two brakes (also available in black) that I reckon would be worth looking at are M5’s Bram’s brake and Paul’s racer.
M5 are a recumbent manufacturer run by Bram Moens who have in recent years developed some rather nice bits of light weight kit, with Bram’s brake, Bram set out to produce the lightest, stiffest brake possible, it also looks great. I was going to get a set of these but managed to get the Zero Gravitys cheap from a friend. Bit of me still wishes I’d gone for the M5’s, they cost 395 euros a pair, can see them here;
http://www.m5-ligfietsen.nl/site/EN/_m5__Lightweight_bike_parts/M5-side-pull-brake/
Paul’s racer’s are almost the exact opposite, his modern take on a pair of traditional centrepulls. I’ve not seen a pair in the flesh so to speak but had a set of his motolites on my Xtracycle and they were beautifully finished and worked flawlessly, no reason to think the racers would be any different. They’re $266 a pair (plus shipping and taxes) and you can see them here;
http://www.paulcomp.com/racer.html
I also like the look of the titanium Campagnolo records, on reflection I think FRM’s light weight callipers are available in black to. I would have posted some pictures but I can't work out how to find out the address for the location of pictures I've uploaded to Flickr, I realise there's another thread on posting pictures but can anyone enlighten me?