Originally Posted by staehpj1

Sorry for the confusion, no brazed stop. It sounds like you figured it out. How much it is needed depends on a lot of factors including frame size. Your frame is larger and bars higher so the piece is less needed than on mine. Your routing looks pretty clean as is.

Enjoy the new bike. Any big tours coming up?

We did the TA on three of these bikes and were very happy with them. I would suggest a few things:
1. The gearing is pretty high and we added a Sugino XD600 crank (46-36-26 at $80) and later changed the 26 to a 24. If you will be doing loaded touring in hilly areas or mountains at least the 26 is a must IMO.
2. The stock rack is a bit flimsy. Two of us upgraded to a Blackburn EX-1. The other used the stock rack for the 4244 mile tour. It held up fine but flexed and swayed.
3. The brakes themselves are fine, but the stock pads were less than optimum. We used then until they wore out, but they wear out suddenly when they still look like they have a bit of wear left, so carry spares on a long tour or change them early.

If interested you can probably glean a few more details from our journal at : http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/staehling2007