Originally Posted by
corwin1968
There may not be a real solution short of physically modifying something. I may just pick up some cheap 26" slick tires to replace the knobbies and spend some time riding it san brakes. I've been doing that for the last couple of days, just riding up and down the street to get a feel for the bike. I did find a 1988 Bridgestone MB-5, which has geometry closer to what I like than most MTB's, but it's $100 and has one of those funky rear brakes that I know nothing about.
You wanna know about that funky rear brake? It's a U-Brake, and it's the most awesome brake ever. The mb-5 may've been the second-to-crumbiest Bridgestone MTB ever, but it's still got rockin' geometry. If it has a chainstay mounted u-brake, that'd make it a 1988 model. These have about as short a wheelbase as horizontal-toptube mtbs ever had, but it's still gotta be at least 420mm at the chainstays.
I tried to not get into the whole bulldog/880-style "bmx" caliper discussion, but those are the worst brakes ever. With some fiddling, you can set them up to stop a wheel, but they'll never perform very well, and the feel at the lever is utterly disgusting. Avoid. You can't be sure they'd even do the trick for this application, anyway, unless you do some careful measurements. Get a coaster or a drum or something... or get some lockjaws by mr. tick. Which is what you'd really need for this l'il experiment, but if $100 seems like a lot for a cool mtb like an mb-5, then $75 for some bolt-on canti bosses will probably give you fits.
