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Old 11-19-10 | 05:11 PM
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Andy_K
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Originally Posted by OTHB
Do you have a product name, or manufacturer, was going to try and hunt one down on the web b/c my LBS gave me a blank stare when I showed them your post and asked for the same thing.
There are several available. The Tektro RX5 is an representative example.

The basic idea is really pretty simple. V-brakes traditionally require longer cable pull because otherwise they have too much mechanical advantage. Mechanical advantage is directly proportional to braking power, but inversly proportional to how far the brake moves for a given amount of cable pull. If you have high mechanical advantage and short cable pull (as with STI levers), your lever is likely to bottom out before you've applied the force you wanted to the brake (obviously depending to some extent on how close to the rim you set up the brake).

As the arm length on the V-brake goes down, its mechanical advantage goes down, meaning it can be used with less cable pull. The trade-off is that as the arm length goes down, so does the braking power. For reference, the Tektro RX5 has an 85mm arm, where as the Shimano Deore M590 V-brake has a 107mm arm.

Even with the shorter arm, mini-V's have a lot of mechanical advantage, and so even though they can be made to work with STI levers, you still need to set them up pretty close to the rim.

Incidentally, I believe the reason they fix the brake shutter problem is that the cable pull on the brake isn't dependent on the positional relation of the fork to the lever, so braking power isn't reduced as the fork flexes.
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