Bump! Got a chance to work on this a little bit and apparently I have made a hilarious oversight. Where the old Huffy brakes had the brake wire entering the unit from the
right side, the new Tektro brakes have the wire on the
left side. So the path of the wires into the brakes has to be different than before, I guess.
First the good news - the difference in brake line entry was actually an advantage on the front brake. The housing can make a nice, smooth curve. I threw together the front brake unit really fast - haven't had time to fine-tune it yet - just to see what would happen. Mission accomplished on that front - I can actually stop the bike reasonably fast now!
So there's my new front brake line housing. I hope the path is OK. Only thing is, did I cut the housing too short?
I can't tell if it's about right or maybe a bit too short. I don't notice any resistance when pulling the lever, and there's nothing restricting its range of motion when I turn the handlebars in any direction. So functionally, it seems OK. But is it worth redoing so the curve looks a bit smoother?
Now for the
trainwreck that is the current back brake situation...
The red shapes are supposed to be showing the shape of the old caliper and its brake line - it used to make a nice, soft curve into the housing of the top bar of the frame. But you can see that's impossible with the entry point of the brake being on the other side now.
The yellow line is close to what I tried first, and (unsurprisingly in hindsight) it was friggin' godawful. Way too tight, nasty scratching sound, brake lever almost didn't want to spring back after being pulled sometimes, totally unusable.
I was trying to brainstorm some other way to run the brake line, but I didn't want to ziptie it along the top of the frame all stupid-looking.
I'm trying to avoid the "my bike was assembled by an idiot" look here.
So I'm kind of at a loss of what I should do with the path of that back brake. For now, I left it as it is in the photo, just sort of making that huge loop, while I try to figure out what I can do. It still has plenty of friction in that position and sticks out way too much; you can sometimes touch it with your leg when you're pedaling.
Any ideas or comments on the front or back brake situation? The Tektro brakes are working great otherwise, huge improvement.