Originally Posted by
SurferRosa
What would be a unique feature of a brake lever that would limit you to certain calipers? The only thing I can think of is if they're normally routed aero levers (left lever is the front), you will want the caliper's cable entry on the opposite side.
Going the other way (given a set of calipers and choosing new levers), I can understand a caliper without a quick release might force some folks to choose levers with one built in.
Originally Posted by
tricky
I've heard folks around here make claims about some levers working better or worse than other levers when combines with certain calipers. Maybe cable pull is different for different levers? Shimano claims their SLR brakes work best with their SLR levers, but hard to believe big bike companies with claims like that.
For SLR- the return spring in the brakes is weaker than a normal return spring- it's not strong enough to open the caliper, pull the cable back, and pull the brake lever back to start. The spring in the SLR levers pushes the lever back to start. So if you're riding SLR brakes with non-SLR levers, you constantly have to flip your levers back to the start position after braking.