Bedrock & Paradox

I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

Levers

Nothing more important on your bike than brakes.  Wheels and tires, I suppose, but for going anywhere interesting there’s little point in having one without the other.  At least if you’re a control freak like me.
I’ll say straight away that this discussion is confined to cable-pull (mechanical) rigs.  No interest in hydraulics have I.  That said, not all levers are created equal.  General smoothness, rigidity, and lack of slop are important, but it has become increasingly clear to me that standards of cable pull are more like these other qualities, with respect to variability, than one might think.
Take these beauties as an example.  Almost new, 15 dollar Avid FR-5s that I just put on the Karate Monkey (tape is for insulation from the cold, heat shrink is better but I was out).  Theoretically these are built to the mythic standard of “long pull,”to work with v-brakes and contemporary mechanical disks.
And yet these little guys pull a lot of cable.  More than either of the levers pictured below by a substanital margin.  They give the Avid Arch-Rival I’ve got on the rear wheel of the singlespeed a nice hard stop, and the Avid Road BB7 on the front a very, very hard stop.  I like.

Now according to Sheldon Brown (RIP), this does not bespeak of optimal brake power.  He may be correct, but my experience using road pull disks with mountain (long) pull levers over the last two years has convinced me that the more emphatic actuation is more than just a psychological benefit.  Less finger power for a given brake power means a more relaxed rider, which means more control and less fatigue on long descents. 

The context for all of this is that prior to February of 2008 I ran drop bars on all my bikes.  That spring I changed over to risers, and that meant new levers, shifters, grips, and stem in addition to bars.  It took two year or fiddling and purchasing to finally, now, have things as I like on both mountain bikes.

I didn’t want to buy new brakes, so I searched out both of the following sets of levers.  Both have adjustable cable pull, as they’re from the era when cantilevers fought v-brakes for mountain bike dominance.  The red ones I bought on MTBR, the blue ones were given to me by Brendan in a moving show of generosity.

The blue levers are on my Lenz, the red ones on M’s Soma.

The red levers are the sweetest I’ve ever used, by far.  Super smooth, stiff, and they seem to pull just a bit more cable than the blues.  Thing is, once I got these levers on bikes and in action, I quickly found that I prefered the dials set for max cable pull.  And that is how they’ve stayed.  M is lucky I let her have these for the sake of her color scheme.  Though when I build up a Pugs as my next bike (whenever that might be), I’ll be tempted to get some lowly FR-5s.  They work well, and you can’t beat the cost/performance ratio.

On a completely different note, here’s a fun video from Media Feliz, the guys behind some of the best packrafting videos yet made.

http://www.youtube.com/v/xIuHvJ9UK0I&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1

DaveC

2 responses to “Levers”

  1. Enel Avatar
    Enel

    I have ridden with Wayne Lumpkin, (the inventor of the BB7 brake and mastermind behind Avid before selling it to SRAM) a couple times. We had some discussions about brakes, and he told me that the lowly FR5 lever is the best lever to use with the BB7. He designed it specifically for the purpose and put a lot of money in to the casting/production. In other words, it's a lot more sophisticated than its price point.I will email him this post and see if we can get a comment.

    Reply
  2. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    That is really cool.

    Reply

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