Originally Posted by
davidindec
When converting a flat bar, with existing V brakes, to drop bar, what do you do about the brakes? From the pictures it looks like you have V brakes with drop bar brake levers. I was under the assumption that this wouldn't work.
Sweet ride by the way.
The biggest challenge I had in converting from flat bars to drops was sourcing the right parts. I had to use v-brake specific aero brake levers from Cane Creek: Drop V. These levers have a linear pull and are made specifically to work with V-brakes.
One thing that did I realize as I was putting everything back together was that in moving to aero levers for the drop bars, I was loosing the brake cable barrel adjusters I had previously on my flat bar brake lever setup. This makes fine tuning the brakes a little trickier but in all for me the mod was well worth it.
If you are considring doing someting similar here is how my mod was broken down:
Cane Creek Drop V Brake levers: $45
Nitto Randonneur Bars: $47
Dura-Ace brake and shifter cables $30
Bontrager gel bar tape: $25
Dura-Ace 8 speed bar-end shifters: Free (gift from my brother)
New (shorter+higher rise) Bontrager stem: $35
Labor: $0 / did the work myself.
As other have said, it would probably have been cheaper to sell the bike and buy another. But I liked my Marin and sourcing the parts and doing the work was more than half the fun...