Originally Posted by
stevemtbr
Been riding shimano V Brakes since 97. I have ridden older non parallel LX brakes that worked great. Got a hold of some new LX V's with the parallel push and was very disappointed. Upgraded to XT and it was a little better. Two years ago I went with the Avid single digit 7's and they are much better than the XT's. All that linakage adds flex which robs braking power. I do have the XT levers and they rock. With my XT's I never did have a squeeling problem up front and back then I was on Mavic rims. Have you noticed that the new 08 XT's don't have the parallel push.
I won't argue with you about the Avid brakes being good, I do agree.
But I do have to say that when I installed my parallel push XT's with the Servo Wave levers, they pulled so hard they flexed the seatstays on a very stiff aluminum frame a LOT. So much so that I had to install brake boosters to get the frame flexing under control. After that, the brakes were just incredible.
My only complaint is with the front brake noise, and I think that is pretty much unavoidable with that era of XT parallel push brakes. I tried everything from a lot of toe-in, a little toe-in, no toe-in, brake booster, a wide variety of pads, cleaning of rims, pads, etc, etc.
Bottom line, I've cussed those brakes because of the noise, but I've NEVER thought of them as needing more power.
