I have a 1950 Thanet Silverlight that was originally made for braze-on Resilion brakes. Unfortunately, someone whose hands the frame passed through decided not to bother with finding a set and had the fork crown and rear seat stay bridge drilled for caliper brakes. He also fitted the frame with 27" instead of the 26" wheels it was designed for.

This is the machine:

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1950 Thanet Silverlight by Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]

If you look closely you can just make out the holes meant for mounting the brakes These are the same type of Resilion brakes as found on old Sunbeams of the 1930s, whereas almost all the Resilions that come up on eBay are the clamp-on type, which can't be used on a Thanet due to the clamps being shaped for different shaped seat stays and fork legs.

This is what someone has done to the fork in order to fit standard caliper brakes - the Resilion mounting holes are plainly visible:

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1950 Thanet Silverlight by Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]

When I first saw that the hole had been drilled through the decorative T I thought it was strange - 'Why design something like that when it was going to be hidden by a brake!? When I eventually realised the bike was designed for Resilions & 26" wheels it all clicked and frankly it made me feel sick. I don't know which came first, the bother of getting a set of Thanet-correct Resilion brakes and then needing 27" wheels for calipers to reach the rims, or the bother of getting nice, period-correct 26" wheels and then needing calipers to work with 27" wheels but I suspect the former.

Bad me, but I rather lost interest in the Thanet after that and so it stayed for about a year, during which I sometimes considered selling it as is. Then, a few weeks back, I had a Japanese 30s to 50s English lightweight restorer/collector friend around to visit. He has several Resilion-equiped machines and we talked at length about them and the Thanet and he encouraged me to return the machine to original spec. He also mentioned there was a very nice pair of 26" Conloy sprint wheels on eBay. He also suggested that I start buying Resilion parts, saying that it would be good to have all the cables and levers ready for the day when I managed to find a set of braze-on Resilion cantilevers. And so it started. I bought the wheels and have been buying Resilion parts here and there. All I need now is the cantilevers and to have the vandalised frame repaired.

To my question... I'm cleaning up a front brake lever and cable and it seems to me that there is no way of removing the cables from the splitter. Looking inside the splitter it seems the 2 individual cantilever cables are crimped into a metal crimp (?) with the single lever cable crimped between them. Is there a way of dismantling the cable set or were they always sold as one piece? In other words, if any one of the 3 cables broke, did you used to have to buy a whole new cable assembly?

An interesting thing to me is how the cantilever-end cables each have a little telescopic springs at the ends, meaning the cantilevers themselves were springless.

The lever and cables:

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The lever disassembled with the cable set detached. by Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]

The telescopic cantilever springs:

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IMG_5114 by Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]

Inside the splitter - you can just see the end of the lever cable wire and a corner of the metal crimp:

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The crimped end of the lever cable is visible, as is a corner of the metal crimp. by Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]