Mini V...Recommended
 

After enduring the stock avid 4s and switching to BR550s (mild improvement) I still had poor braking and extreme fork juddering (outright hazardous in the wet). Had given up and was about to sell my JTS. Instead, I took the plunge and got tektro mini vees installed. In a word: AWESOME! Powerful, good modulation, no squeaking (yet) and no freakin juddery fork syndrome at all. No need for travel agents, same clearance as the canti's I had. Run, do not walk, to your LBS and make the switch! :D
Thanks to Elmar and others on this forum for encouraging the move :)

Congrats on the brakes. I was considering Campy Veloce mini-v's on one of my rides. A quick question, Do you have a carbon or steel fork?

Tim

Carbon...Easton EA70 thingy

Seems like of most of the riders who complain of brake shudder have carbon forks. You never hear about it with steel forks. I believe it's the flex factor of carbon.

Tim

Heh heh, I knew it was a loaded question ;) Not entirely true though, a quick search for "shudder" shows there's a instances of steel/al forks doing the shimmy. Either way, worked for me, and mini vs are cheaper than forks...

No, not really. You don't hear about it with high quality CF forks.

Tim

another very satisfied mini-v customer. I am using them on a Scattante cross frame/carbon fork with Cane Creek levers and Velocity aerohead rims with stock brake pads. Awesome brakes. Smooth, easy to adjust, no shudder and tons of power.

Sorry about digging up an old thread...

...but, for those of you using mini-v's, it seems Tektro offers 2 versions: 80mm and 85mm arms. Is one preferable to the other?

pictures, anyone?

here ya go.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1394/...a533c42af9.jpg
they are cheap, too. less than $10/each dealer cost

Err? Ummm? Mini V's work with road levers?

Cool!

I too was surprised to hear tales of road lever awesomeness sans travel agents. But such tales exist, in this very forum. Including a gentleman named Elmar in Germany who says that everyone on his team is running them. Other posters have tried them. The Specialized Tricross line for '08 is spec'd with mini-v's.

A quick forum search of the term "mini-v" will reveal several threads.

Campy makes a couple versions, Mirage and Veloce. Tektro is also in this business, making mini-v's in 2 sizes. 80mm and 85mm. The Tektro's are inexpensive enough to test the whole Ergo lever-mini v-no adapter thing for myself...

So, back to my original reason for dusting off this old thread... which size works best?

Campy seems to be using the 85mm size. I would try that first.

Tim

the Ebay listing for the 80mm states that you have to use the adapter............
I don't see the reference in the 85mm listing.
not sure if that is the smoking gun, but I would like to hear the setup /effectiveness of a 85 mm set to road levers.

Hello, I am currently using the Tektro RX5, which have the 85mm brake arm length, and am running them with my Shimano Dura ace Sti levers(9spd). When I have them dialed in, they have about 2-3 mm of clearance between the rim and the brake pads. I am using the noodles with the built in adjustable barrel so that I can adjust the brakes during a race. At the Suckerbrook cross race last weekend, which was totally dry, the brakes worked really great, and I did not have the hand fatigue I usually do with Empellas or Shimano BR550's. I noticed that once in a while if I was really rocking the bike, I could hear the rim scraping against the pads. This morning, I was riding in some really wet, grassy conditions, and the braking was near perfect, but as can be imagined, crap gets caught between the rim and the brakes and the wheel was not spinning freely after an hour of working out. Also, I noticed significant wear on my SwissStop pads. This week I will get the wheels completely trued so that there is no excessive rubbing. I have this set up both on the pit bike and race bike. I love how streamlined the bike looks without the cable hanger. I will post some pictures of the set up tonight on my blog...

http://japanesecyclocross.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the help guys. I bought a set of the RX-5s (85mm), and I should have them set up by the end of the week, with Veloce 9sp Ergo's actuating the brakes. I'll report back, just so other people know. Maybe later, since it's so inexpensive, I'll get a pair of the 80mm levers and compare the performance. I'm scientific like that.

Edit: anyone got a source for those adjustable noodles? Just in case.

Jagwire Adjustable Noodles
 

I bought mine from a place called http://www.biketoolsetc.com/

www.Aebike.com has this also.

Good luck! I wonder if they will ever come out with a Mini Travel agent for Mini V-brakes which can be mounted near the handlebar to prevent mud clogging so that you can have a ton of clearance.

Thanks for the links.

Travel agents are just pulleys that change the cable pull, so it would be fairly simple to machine/manufacture a lever mounted version, I would think.

Get thee to a patent office quick, yash.

On many of the sites I have been to, I have read that a travel agent is not necessary, but I feel like if Problem Solvers came up with one that was supersleek, light and pulled the correct amount of cable, V-brakes as well as Mini V-brakes would become more of an alternative to expensive Cantis. You could have a pretty nice brakeset for less than $40!

i had the 80 mm tektros. Lever pull was horrible. Way squishy and long. Ended up going back to cantis

I am considering some for my Trek 520. It has 287-V's with avid single digit 5's. It is still a bit squishy and the pads need to be pretty close to the rim. I am wondering if the mini V's which require less mechanical advantage than the average V might help.

Hold on a cotton pickin'.

Are Mini-V's legal for racing? Not that I race, or even own a CX bike. Just wondering.

I believe they are. I picked up a used pro frame that had mini-Vs.

I thinking of making the jump from cantilever to mini-v's, but I confused about the 85mm length preference, and to make it worse, Tektro has just updated the RX5 to 90mm (see their website).

If a standard v-brake of apx. 100mm requires a travel agent to effectively lengthen the cable pull, and 85mm min-v's still require the brake pad adjustment to be very close to the rim and the braking force of the 85mm is not quite progressive enough, why wouldn't the 80mm mini-v's work better? The only negative of the 80mm over the 85mm would be reduced braking power due to the reduction in the brake arm and maybe less clearance for a larger diameter tire.

Has anyone tried both and come to a conclusion?

I just set up some RX-5s (oem from ebay so probably the old type) with Cane Creek's Drop V levers on my Rob Roy. Way, way better stopping power than the CC SCX-5 cantis on my crosscheck, and no squealing so far.