Originally Posted by
3speed
Doing my first touring build, and I've never been fond of canti-levers, but I've also never had any experience with any other than low-end crappy ones. I have had plenty of experience with v-brakes, though, and they're so simple to set up and have great power and modulation, even when using the cheap ones. Is there any reason to choose cantilevers over v-brakes if v-brakes fit with my fenders?
Depends on the levers. Road bike levers...until Shimano started monkeying around with the pull ratios
...work directly with cantilever brakes. They won't work with v-brakes without travel agents which are more of a pain to set up than cantilevers every thought of being.
If you are working with flat bars and v-brake levers, there's no real advantage to cantilevers, other than fender clearance which can be a problem.