Cyclocross - Building CX bike- help with brakes, RDR.

I am building a CX/ Go everywhere bike from an old lugged steel frame and i am running into troubles with the brakes. The fork/ seatstays have no braze-ons for cantilever brakes, just the single pillar for side pulls. I wont be doing any actually CX racing, but just using it on singletrack and road. I was thinking I could try and get some big clearance sidepulls, or maybe old school centerpulls. I am also planning on getting ahold of an old Deore RDR with thumbshifters of barcons and just running a single 39t chainring up front. How does this plan sound? Sorry if this is a bad place to post but It seemed that you guys would know the most.

I would consider tire clearance, you may not be able to fit larger tires.

Michael

Here's the problems:

1) Your older bike may or may NOT have sufficient clearance for the cyclocross tires you want. Modern cyclocross tires of 35 mm or more width aren't hard to come by now but they're usually to wide for anything other than a pure cyclocross frame built for the wider tires.

28 mm cyclocross tires used to be derigor but the times they are a changin.

2) Usually the centerpull brakes that will fit around the cyclocross tires aren't very good brakes. It is usual to have frame builder add the cantilever mounts to your bike so that you can use real cantilever brakes. Of course that usually means that you have to paint the bike afterwards. So you ought to be serious about building such a bike.

3) You probably know more about how you're planning on riding than I do but a plain 39 tooth front would seem to me to be far too slow for most people.

4) I've built several bikes like you're planning and generally used fairly decent old frames. Problem was that in the end there simply wasn't enough mud clearance and when I got REAL (tm) mud in there it jammed the wheels.