Ironfish653

I have a '76 Bridgestone Super Light that recently finished a major overhaul. One of the things I did was to replace the OE center-pulls with DiaCompe BRS 101 side pull calipers.
Ad I get more miles on it, the braking from speed (15mph) isn't quite as strong as I'd like. It seems to take about 2~3 feet longer than it should, and never comes close to locking up.
I'm using the original DiaCompe 'red dot' levers' which do have some flexibility to them, and being a new older bike, it has full length cable housings.
Is there any thing that I should look at to make the brakes stronger, or is this par for the course for a bike like this?

rekmeyata

I agree with the Kool Stop Salmon pads, these are the same pads that use to be made by Mathauser brake pads that were widely used in racing for performance braking back in the day.

Changing the levers won't do a thing for braking performance, but cables could make it feel better.

If you are using rims from the 70's they used an angled sidewall and the brake calipers back then were all angled so the pads would be angled for proper contact with the rim, since you put modern calipers on these newer type are made for modern rims that have parallel sidewalls and thus the new calipers are not angled correctly to make full contact on the parallel sidewall. To get a new caliper to work on a vintage rim you need to have the correct washers to get the pads to angle correctly, or buy modern rims which isn't a bad idea since modern rims are a lot better than the old vintage rims.

Also make sure that your pads are installed correctly, some pads are a bit longer on one end then the other (using the bolt as the middle point), if your's is like that you need to have the longer end facing rearward.

Also make sure your pads are adjusted correctly, the contact is wrong on the rim your braking performance will drop, see this:
Once you get the correct pad for you brakes and use them let us know if your braking improved.