Cannondale Aficionados / Owners

Howard, how bad is the performance with cantis using 105 levers ?

Terrifying. But if you are racing you can always slow down with your feet. Or hit a tree.

I'm a little sceptical since surely the cable pull is the same for all the shimano brake levers. (Happy to be proven wrong though, and much as obliged for the warning).

5700, 6700 and 9700 all have a tweaked cable pull ratio. Wade your way through the confusion.

Id rather use sram, but not sure I can justify buying a new sram group that'd do the frame justice at the moment.

Apex? Cheap n cheerful and works very well. Easy to find used.

The main concern at this stage as I mentioned is the wheelset. I'm feeling drawn to a custom build of novatec road hubs on velocity a23 rims. Tubs would follow later; in the meantime I have some clincher CX tyres and would later use the a23s as road training wheels to give a nice shape with (say) 25mm rubber.

Yeah that's a nice start. It's a shame Stans don't do an Iron Cross with a braking surface. You could try Alphas and go tubeless but I'm not sure if Alphas will work with low pressures.