rickybails

Travel adjusters are a gear for your cable - they make the cable at the caliper end move twice as far as the cable at the lever end. There's an inner wheel and an outer wheel - the lever end is moving the inner wheel and the cable is threaded through the wheel to pull the caliper via the outer wheel. You can bypass the gearing effect by running the cable straight round the outside of the outer wheel.

One the front I use a caliper brake. I run an airnimal chameleon carbon fork at the front which is made for 520 wheels and no caliper is long enough to stretch to a 406 (and there's no v-brake or disc mounts) so I've built a bracket to attach to the fork's brake mount and create a new brake mount lower down, from where I run a standard road caliper. It's simpler than it sounds - the bracket is just a couple of thick tie-bars running vertically with an aluminum block at the bottom exactly the same length as the original brake mount with a hole drilled down the middle. The fork saves a lot of weight and when I run my 406 kinetic pro wheels (less than 1kg a pair) the bike is very light (but I have to avoid potholes!).