Hello folks,

I just took my first ride today on a bike that I've working on making rideable lately, and discovered something interesting with the brakes. One brake lever, the front, travels quite a bit before it engages with the wheel and begins to apply the brake, at which point, it slows the bike quite well and doesn't travel much further before being very hard to pull. The other lever engages much more quickly, but has a very linear feel in terms of pressure required and doesn't do much to slow the bike down. Both the front and rear brakes are canti brakes and both levers are the same, but the front and rear brakes are different models. I'm wondering if this may be an issue of the pull length of my brake levers (Tektro RL340) and the brakes (These ones on the front and Chang Star cantilevers from the late 80s/early 90s out back). See, I'm not entirely sure which set of brakes, if either, is doing the right thing in terms of when it's engaging and how hard it's braking. I definitely like the power of the front brakes much better, but I'm wondering if they shouldn't engage sooner. I think I've done a fairly good job of setting the brakes up correctly, but I'm no expert. I've attached some pictures so you can see what's going on with my setup. What are your thoughts?