Center-pull V brakes -vs- Rock Shox Dart 2 fork
 

I am looking to get a basic suspension fork for my around town beater bike to soak up some of the rough stuff, and maybe do the occasional green trail near my house. I put the bike together with random spare parts I had laying around and some donor stuff from friends, so total invested so far is about $60 for the slime tubes and crap. Anyway, the point of the post is about the Rock Shox Dart 2 fork. I am looking at this one but notice that it doesn't seem to be configured to take a center-pull brake setup which is what I have on this bike.

Does anyone know if I can just drill a hole centered in the middle of the arch and run the brake cable through there? I would ideally like to avoid throwing any more money into this bike than necessary.

Your choices are to either find a cable hanger for the fork or invest in a set of linear pull brakes. If it was my bike I'd go for the brakes.

Yes V brakes are compressed by the cable pulling then into each other ,

rather than pulled from above .. Some come on pretty low cost bikes these days

so keep your eye out at garage sales and Police Auctions for bikes to cannibalize parts from.

I would advise against drilling a hole in the bridge of your fork, it could compromise the forks integrity. Center pull v-brakes don't work with suspension forks thats why they use linear pull brakes. Use linear pull brakes, your LBS will have these for around 10-15 dollars and they will work with your current brake lever.

If the current lever matches the center-pull brake, then it won't match a new V-brake. If the current lever isn't integrated with the shifter, then it's a straight-forward swap.

OP, do you have post mounts on the frame for the rear brake? Might want to just get new levers and Vs for both.

V-brakes are linear pull, not center pull.

Center pull are Cantilever brakes.

The OP is a new poster, best not to confuse with mis-infomation.

For brakes working with suspension forks, if there is a cable hanger, Cantilever brakes will work fine, but cable hangers haven't been fitted for 10+ years, the OP may be able to find a cable hanger which is integrated into a stem spacer which would enable them to use Cantilever brakes.

As the OP wants to use a sus fork, maybe you'd like to reconsider the part below?

A cable hanger/stem spacer combo would have the cable casing ending above the telescoping section of the fork, making brake actuation dependent on suspension travel.
Whichever brake you use, the cable casing has to bridge the moving part of the fork for the brakes to work properly. Hence, bridge- mounted cable stops required for canti brakes.

Whew. I was starting to wonder if there was a such thing as center pull V-brakes.

I think I'd ditch the Cantis and get V-brakes on that fork. Make sure you get V-brake levers also.

Good point for the cable hanger, for the mis-infomation, was refering to the description of types of brakes.

Granted, that one was a bit dodgy.

But given the quality of information to be found under the "specification" tab relating to department store bikes, there are probably worse beasts lurking out there....