melville

Hi there! Been off the bike and the forum for a while, but my wife and kids are kinda bringing me back. Seems they took pity on my old bike sitting with a worn out Judy DH fork and got me a new fork for my birthday this week. The Judy was old enough (1996) that I was using it with old, high profile, heavy spring XT cantilevers. The new fork will run either V-Brakes or what is apparently called a 'post mount' disc.

I'd like to step all the way forward into the 21st century with a hydraulic disc up front, but I'm wondering about what I can do to make the lever as HIGH-effort as possible. Can one mix and match master cylinders and calipers toward this end?

I'm an old gorilla, used to a heavy feel at the lever, like old Campy single pivots on the road bike, or pre-SLR cantis on the mountain bike. I appreciate that modern brakes are all about the stopping, but I have a heckuva time modulating them when I just want to slow down.

AnkleWork

Too many misconceptions to address, but here's a suggestion: glue a large block of hard rubber between the grip and lever.

melville

Thanks! How about someone who is less of a smartass to chime in, please.

tomacropod

Use your existing lever and an avid bb7 brake. Adjustable spring tension and has an actual spring. Also very powerful.

- joel

Retro Grouch 

What size rotor are you using? A smaller rotor = more effort required.

fietsbob

your goal runs the reverse of what the engineers are trying to improve ..

So in that your wish may not be easily fulfilled ..

Stick with cantilevers , and the brake levers where the cable comes out the top..

I have a firm grip setup, but it's quite effective .. on my old touring bike
Old Campag brake levers .. calipers, ScottPetersen SE. KS pads.

Magura Hydrostop 33 model works so nice , on the new rig .. another set of KS pads.

Cable operated disc brakes may offer something to go with a desire to tinker , in a countercurrent swim.

still grabbing too hard with discs may flip you over the bars .. careful out there.

bythe way there are modulators , essentially a spring on the end of the V brake housing

they are an attempt to keep neophytes from overdoing the front braking ..
they dont stiffen the grip.. just soften the force squeezing the pads against the rim.

perhaps the stiff foam rubber behind the brake lever is not so whack an Idea ..

AnkleWork

My suggestion is one of the few things that could actually fulfill your stated desires.

A smartass remark would have been something like "why not just learn how to use brakes correctly?" and you would not have liked that.

well biked

My advice: open your mind, and be willing to try something entirely different if you really want to install hydraulic disc brakes on your mountain bike. Like you, I've used all sorts of brakes......and the best mountain bike brakes I've ever used reside on my current mountain bike. They're Shimano hydraulic disc brakes. I got "used to them" pretty quickly.

reptilezs

just buy good brakes and you will have modulation. i would highly recommend the current gen shimano. slx and xt are really nice. the xtr is lighter but you loose some features for weight savings

djb

In all seriousness, think of it related to cars, when you go from one car with a diff amount of effort required for the brakes, you adapt after just a few stops. I really wouldnt worry about the differences from what you are used to, and going mechanical (like BB7s) will possibly be mre to your liking.
It seems you should do some test rides of bikes at shops to get an idea of how diff disk setups feel, to give you a starting point.

BenPS

I was gonna say "ride faster, you'll have to squeeze the brakes harder to stop" but you wouldn't have liked that either.

but yeah, if you want to go disc, try a bb7. Mechanical, easy to work on and install, decent feel, and cheaper than hydro. Good way to ease in to the modern era

djb

being a racer at heart, I'll add, " ride faster and brake later. If you leave it late enough you will have to squeeze pretty hard and modulate it off nicely if you go real deep into the apex-- disk, fluid, mechanical, cantis, v's, feet dragging on the ground, whatever.

melville

So what I was hoping here was that there was some knowledge about relative hydraulic leverage ratios in the BF.net hive mind, but that seems to be lacking.

I worked in the industry for over a decade after the great BRS and SLR revolution, right up into the V-brake era (and some primitive discs). Every time I took one of the low effort brakes out for a test, it was like "Hot damn, these suckers can STOP!" But if I tried them on my own bike, on the rides I like to take, they just didn't work as well.

djb

Melville, serious question here. Why are you leaning to hydraulic vs mechanical disks? True I personally don't have the knowledge of the different feels you are asking about-- I suspect the mtn bike section or a dedicated mtn bike forum would get you very detailed answers about different specific systems, hydraulic and mechanical, and specifically about feel and actual finger pressure requirements. Again if its the actual pressure amount that bugs you, one would think that mechanical will require more force.
Your question still makes me think of the automotive side, of how some older power brake systems were terrible for having little feel and kind of an on/off feel (I'm thinking of some 70s cars I drove as an early driver)

melville

Indeed--I'm somewhat aware of the mechanical options, where one can mix road calipers and mountain levers to adjust effort. I'm looking for similar info on hydraulics.

djb

Is your keen interest in hydraulic for the (I presume) better modulation aspect of them vs cable pull stuff? Coming from a motorcycle background as well (goofing around in dirt, and a bit of paved circuit racing) I see improved modulation ease being a plus. The two bikes I ride (bicycles) have Vs and cantis. The cantis with kool stop softer pads have much better modulation than my old mtn bike with V's the same pads. The v's are much more on/off with really hard brake application, where the cantis are much more confidence inspiring when I brake hard into fast downhill paved corners on that bikes 28 slicks-the modulation diff is so much better than my v brake bike.

I realize there are factors that can help with brake setups and will affect braking force, as well as feel, so I suspect with disk setups there are diff feels with diff brake setups, just as I imagine pad choice is a factor as well (and as mentioned, throw in actual rotor choice too)

good luck getting some answers, I'm sure you can find a crowd that can give you good user info on various hydraulic setups that can steer you to a setup that you would be comfortable with.

melville

Thanks! You seem to understand. Yes, the forks give me just the option of V-brake or disc, and Vs are out for exactly the reason you mention. I need to be able to unlock the front during the inevitable OH **** moment.

I didn't think I was out as a moto person here, but for a reference I find the effort and feel of the single ATE disc on the front of my old BMW to be just fine, and something I wouldn't mind on the mountain bike.

Next dry day I'll take some pedals to the LBS and try a few, if they have any. Hydro-equipped bikes are not heavily stocked here.

reptilezs

early hydro brakes like the hayes mag and 9 were pretty on and off with not modulation. the new stuff is really better. you could consider 140mm rotors to reduce power too.

djb

I was meaning me as an ex moto guy, but all the better cuz you know about disk behaviour on bikes then, (motorcycles, old habit)

old Beemer--how old, are we talking 2004, 1984, 1964? When I raced a two stroke road bike in 84, it had twin front disks that could barely lift the rear, could lock the fronts if your tire pressure wasnt right, --skip ahead to bikes nowadays and the brake systems are really strong, tires are really soft and you can see guys doing stoppies all the time. I'll take a really strong front brake any time over "old" stuff, but in the end, it comes down to just adapting to a diff amount of pressure required. The main thing is always going to be modulation, and its nice to see the last fellow mentioning that newer bicycle disc setups are much better than perhaps what you experienced in the bike industry X years ago.

ps, my interest in all this does come from my interest in having a disc bicycle at some point, just from the "no rim wear in totally crappy muddy conditions" sort of thing that a touring bike can go through. I have read a few very good recommendations of BB7s working very well over long trips in all kinds of conditions.

melville

The bike is a 1975 model. Fairly heavy effort at the lever, and of all things there's a cable to a remote master cylinder hidden underneath the tank, so not purely hydraulic.

Rims were a wear item for some of my customers in Seattle on their winter commuters. Had a coworker who went through 2 or 3 Mavic M231s a year on his race (mountain) bike. He'd inflate the tires to 100 psi on Thursday night and wait for the BOOM. If no BOOM, good to race another weekend. If BOOM, plenty of time to replace the rim before the race.

dabac

Some hydros run mineral oil, others run dot-something brake fluid. Some use easily shortened brake lines, others run "proper" crimped-on fittings. Mix'n match is possible but piston diameter and stroke is rarely posted. If you insist, "easiest" option is probably to pair some serious DH levers - which are meant to be actuated by two fingers, tops - to some fairly basic calipers and the smallest rotors you can fit. Or use whatever and only put one finger on the lever. But I think you're overestimating the problem. People step between bikes with seriously different brake characteristics all the time, and I've never heard anyone blaming a crash on that.

djb

curious about the 75 with a cable to a remote master cylinder. I rode a R90 from about that period once (in mid 80s sometime) and just remember the lovely torque of the engine, no suspension or brake memories at all (but I didnt spend a lot of time on it)

melville

OK, the sun came out and I went out to sample modern brakes. They feel like toys in the shop, but modulation is possible out in the world. Not the on/off switch effect I'd noticed with V-brakes and late 90s discs.

The future does not suck as much as it did yesterday. But I will be using the smallest disc possible, looks like 160mm.

reptilezs

you can get 140mm. i run 160 front and 140 rear

AB@WDW

I'm not a disc expert at all, but maybe you might want to look into something like the TRP HYRD cable-actuated hydraulic disc brakes, something like your old BMW.-Andy