Originally Posted by
MKahrl
This is the best advice in this thread. I did this and found the brake shoes almost made it. Grinding, filing, sanding the brake caliper arms enough to drop the shoes that last 0.25mm was a lot of work.
Check BOTH wheels. The dropout to brake bridge/fork crown distance can very widely. Some 1970's bikes used completely different size Weinmanns on the front and back. It's not uncommon to find the pads in different locations in the caliper slots between front and back.
+1
The 1974 Schwinn Paramount that was in the shop recently (from RiddleofSteel) had a brake bridge that was significantly further away from the dropout than the front fork dropout to fork crown hole. Since I was already doing work to replace the fork steerer, I cut out the old bridge and put a new one in to match the fork distance. This allowed the customer to use the same brake front and rear rather than some mismatched set. Finding a set of brakes with different reaches front and rear is like buying shoes for different size left and right. It's possible, but potentially expensive.
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