Cyclocross - Front brakes and wheel removal...

This is the first Cross bike I've built so forgive the ignorance.

Anyway, the plan was to use Shorty 6's front and rear. They went on just fine, but what I noticed is that any type of canti that uses V-type pads, which is basically all of the modern ones, will not allow the pads to retract far enough to easily remove the front wheel.

So the scenario is, the V pad gets hung up on the fork, not allowing the arms to go back far enough.

I had a set of old school LX MTB brakes running around and slapped those on, which work great and allow the front wheel to come off like it should.

So the question is: What is everyone doing for front brakes?

I see there is some boutique kind of brakes out there that use traditional canti pads.

Any other way to solve this issue?

-Z

i think you'll be better off with the lx brakes.

i begrudingly HAD avid 6's on my cross bike. i also noticed how the back of the pads would hit my fork, but it was never bad enough that i couldn't get my wheel out. my 32's would barely clear, but the 38's i'm currently running would scrub the pads. it was never bad enough to where i couldn't get the wheel out though. it might be an issue of which fork you're running, in terms of how fat the legs are and where the canti bosses are located. i'm running a ritchey carbon fork. my wife used to have a soma doublecross with avid 4's. that fork allowed the brakes to open much wider for wheel removal.

all that said, i just installed an xt canti on the front of my cross bike, which has solved all of my braking issues, plus increased my braking power substantially. i could never get my avid's to work the way i wanted. if they weren't squealing, they were causing the fork to shudder under medium to hard braking, or they had no power. i was running black koolstop pads. the shuddering happened with my stock aluminum fork, as well as my current carbon one.

the xt has great power, great modulation, is silent, and doesn't shudder what-so-ever. i also set it up with a straddle cable, rather than a link wire, so i could experiment with the mechanial advantage. i'm currently running the straddle so it's at about 30 degrees.

Where did you scare up the old school XT's?

-Z

my friend got one from his work. it was brand new and still in the box!! it had been sitting there for years.

can you adjust the spacers on the pads so that they sit closer to the brake arm? this would only help a very little bit, but it could be enough.

it could have some other undesired consequences though.

Great PJ quote.

You are allowed to use different pads than the ones that came on the brakes. You are also allowed to trim them or just take a hacksaw to the things. None of this is uncommon bodgery in the cross world.

Ron

open skewer, lift bars, remove wheel, replace wheel, close skewer....oh yeah, that's for disc brakes :D

You are also allowed to trim them or just take a hacksaw to the things. None of this is uncommon bodgery in the cross world.


Super helpful. I got the LX's setup OK, but will do the hacksaw trick when I replace them. Thanks.

It really only seems like a V pad would need 1/8" or so cut off. Leaving more pad area than a typical canti anyway.