I bought a used 1997 Trek MultiTrack 750 earlier this season and it had the stock Shimano BR-MC16 cantilever brake arms on it. I put some new inexpensive Shimano CT91 brake shoes on it and had a lot of shudder from the front fork. Disappointed, and having been frustrated in the past with cantilever brakes, I threw on a set of used Tektro Mini-Vs I scored for cheap on eBay and went on my way.

I recently wanted to try the cantilevers again. The bike came with BR-MC16s (pictured below) and I also have numerous sets of other Shimano low-proflie cantilevers that I've tried. The biggest difference between these is the MC16s mount the brake shoe posts on the inboard side of the brake arm, rather than on the outboard side as many other Shimano cantilever brakes do. I used the same straddle wire arrangement that is pictured below with the various types of Shimano brake arms, and found a notable difference in braking power -- with the MC16s seeming to provide more braking power than I was able to get out of the other brakes. Shimano claim that the inboard mounting of the brake shoe results in less flex in the system and less torque on the brake bosses. I don't know how true any of that is, but it seems to work well in practice.

I got the very nice Tektro straddle wire triangles and the Tektro fork-mount cable hanger at my local bike shop, and used regular ol' MTB brake cables as the straddle wires themselves. I set the triangle height at about thumb-width above each tire, and was sure to set the brake shoe depth so the brake arm was vertical or just slightly outbound of vertical when it contacts the tire. To finish it, I took some jeweler's rouge on a Dremel pad to the MC16 brake arms to polish them up.

I'm very pleased with the results. It looks super clean to me and braking power is at least as good as it was with the Mini-Vs. I haven't tried to end-o yet, but I can grab enough brake to slide the rear tire when seated, and I figure that's about all I can ask. I'm pretty happy with how well this 20 year old bike stops now...and it looks good doing it.

Does anyone else have success with this particular type of cantilever arm...or have any thoughts about the relative merits (or demerits) of having the shoe inboard vs. outboard of the arm?