Originally Posted by
VintageSteelEU
When I was putting centre pull brakes (Vainqueur 999) on my Grand Sprint, one of my main concerns was the front cable guide. Basically, the headset I use is Stronglight P3 (or a variant of it) with stack height of around 33mm because it's probably the lowest stack height one can find in French threading. The point of getting that one was to make sure the locknut threads on fully onto a short-ish steerer tube. I can't really go for much more than that, because the locknut might possibly have very little thread to grip onto. So putting an extra spacer in there (like the Weinmann headset cable guide one I'm using right now) makes me a bit anxious. I check the locknut before every ride and it seems to be doing alright, but I'm always a bit paranoid about it.
I had a similar issue and solved it two ways.
The first uses a long Mafac rear brake hanger.
There are long ones, and the short ones won't work.
After that I made one; it really needed to be longer than the Mafac would allow, to avoid a sharp curve in the cable run.
This is a bit of stainless spoke silvers-soldered into the wings of a brass wingnut that's been tapped for a normal adjuster.
(This pic is from the trial-fit - the angle at the bottom has been "adjusted" since.)
