So I recently bought what I believe is a 1981 Schwinn Super Le Tour. Really nice riding bike, but it is making me wonder about the old brake levers. I have a 1974 Le Tour and it has the levers I'm familiar with where it has the brakes for in the drops and the safety lever for on the straight bar. Now I think the Super has the original brakes, but these have no safety bar.

In the catalog they are described as having lever hoods. The ones I have look like the right age, but not sure they look like the same brakes pictured in the catalog. Did these originally have rubber hoods? Pretty sure I've seen other supers for sale with these same brakes. As best as I can tell, even with rubber hoods you couldn't ride on them and still brake. Later there are brakes that you ride on the hood and can still brake like modern brifters I believe? So I guess I'm just hoping for a rundown on how the brake evolved and insight into what ones I have on this super. I think I'm going to replace them with some Tektro ones you can ride on.

Hoods were made for the DiaCompe and Weinmann levers (Weinmann licensed the design to DiaCompe). They are exceptionally hard to come by and as best I know, no one makes a replacement. I've made ones from leather as replacements and others have had success with fitting current Cane Creek hoods.

I'd post some pictures of my leather creations and the originals but Photo Bucket seems to be going through an upgrade at the moment. This listing on Ebay for A'ME replacement hoods is about as close as I can find at the moment (and the price is reasonable as well).

The safety levers were an add on to the same model lever and were used on many Schwinn road models in the 1970s. However, you can ride with your hands on the hoods (thumb on the inside and fingers on the outside) and brake using your fingers. Try moving the levers up on your bars about an inch. Some don't care for this look, but I find I can brake well from this position and from the drops.

You might take a look at the Vélo Orange website. They seem to have Dia Compe replacement hoods.

think I get it now. I have to have my thumb on the top and fingers low on the levers and seems like it would work ok. Wasn’t reaching low on the levers before I think. I’ll try after the rain stops. Do aero levers refer to how the cables aren’t coming out the top?

thanks. Is it likely those would work for these levers? Not sure how many non aero styles dia compe had.

Dia-Compe for a time even made hoods with a knock out for the extension levers.

aero levers refer to the cable routing- yes.

The '81 Super LeTour catalog appears to depict adjusting barrels on the brake levers. 'Course, catalog specs are subject to change, blah blah.... But since yours do not have adjusters -- would anyone know if these hoods would fit?

I've stretched the Cane Creek hoods over the fat adjusters and it fits and looks good. The ones that I cut off looked terrible.

There will be a lot of friction created by the tight-fitting rubber when you try to turn the adjusters, but a tiny bit of silicone grease (Shimano/SRAM cable grease or faucet/dielectric grease) goes a long way toward easing the torque required. Just don't use petroleum grease is my recommendation. Also, the tight fit eases over time.

Schwinn levers from this era almost always had adjusters, so the originals may have been swapped out for a pair without aux levers(?).

Or go down into the drops for proper leverage. Different design for a different age of bike racing.

I'm using a pair of Dia Compe's current hoods on old Shimano 7200 levers, and they fit reasonably well.

You CAN brake from the hoods, but the leverage just isn't all that great. Most of your braking was expected to be done from the drops. In looking at non-aero vs aero levers, the pivot and cable stop are placed differently, and I think that's why it's no problem to brake from the hoods with aero levers, compared to the non-aero.

I believe that riders spent a lot less time on the hoods back then, compared to now when MOST of the time your hands are there.

as someone used to modern brifters I’m guessing I’d probably like aero brake levers?

Why not? All the vintage road bikes I've had, regardless of quality of brake lever, I was able to install new hoods, ride on the hoods, and brake from the hoods.

Well, you CAN ride on them, and brake from them, but it's not very comfortable and not very effective, respectively.

You should try them. The ones I'm used to - Shimano Sante and RX100 - are more comfortable to ride on, and easier to brake from than non-aero levers. The other thing is both are connected to better brakes. The Sante single pivot brakes are Shimano's last generation of single pivot brakes and they're really good, especially compared to the older, flexier single pivots. The RX100's are the first generation of dual pivots and they're even better. People will tell you if you can't lock up the wheels with two from the hoods with non-aero levers and single-pivot calipers, you're doing something wrong, but they will never be as effective as modern brakes.

Personally, on my C&V bikes I like to keep them as original as possible, though I'll make exceptions for fit and efficiency. And I like to keep groupsets together as much as I can, so I leave the original brakes and levers on, but I upgrade the pads, and I've taken to using modern brake cable housing, in colors matching the original.

yeah, normally I’m big on stock. But I bought this bike thinking I would likely make it a little more modern for comfort. This bike isn’t too collectible and it would need new paint at some point. But it rides real nice. But I originally thought I couldn’t get hoods for it,
so that made the decision easier. But the Tektro brakes aren’t too expensive so I should probably give them a try.

I never liked braking from the hoods with my old Universal brake levers. I suppose I could try to reinstall, but they were mostly long worn out.

I do like the more "modern" aero levers.

Yeah, Tektro levers are the simple upgrade. Cheap. Good levers. Comfortable and they stop well. I have used them with Mafac; both the Racers and cantis, Schwinn approved centerpulls (probably Weinmann though maybe Diacompe), Shimano dual pivots, Superbe sidepulls. Thought went into the design. I believe they make the Cane Creek levers and probably a few other brands as well.

They are powerful levers and work well from the top. I'm old-school. I learned to race back when we were taught to ride the drops anytime the going got iffy and certainly if we needed to do a serious stop. So I "de-tune" my brakes on the bikes I'll take in to the hills and mountains by using the less powerful Tektro V-brake levers. Not what you, BikingViking want but it works really well for me.

These were designed so you had two breaking positions: with your thumb over the hood, or from the drop position. Neither were comfortable. And, yes, Aero brakes refer to the housing and cables coming out of the bottom of the hoods, along the handlebar.

If you preferred the "turkey leg" safety levers of the 1970s bikes (I did when I commuted back then), check out the more effective in-line interrupter brake levers.

I would beg to differ. The "cable interrupter-style" levers offer much less leverage than either the main levers or traditional auxiliary "turkey-wing" levers, so the pull effort is really high compared to either.

The turkey-leg levers work very well on well-tuned systems, but should have a few millimeters of the front edge of the lever body trimmed upward to restore the lost lever travel caused by the tang on the levers.
Some lever bodies came pre-trimmed toward the end of the lever-tang era.
Some of the later turkey-leg levers socket into the side of the main levers, so the above does not apply.

Shimano Dura-Ace and Tourney turkey levers actually were the main levers, and the regular downward levers acted on those! No surprise then that those models work the best of all, as there are no additional bushings or mechanical connections coming into play:

I think this deserves discussion, since older non-aero levers do make more sense when riding using DT shifters.

The current trend of riding on the hoods is because the shifting functions are there. The bike ends up being set up shorter so that the hood position isn't so far-reaching (forward).
Traditional bikes had longer reach to the handlebar, both forward and downward. The hoods were used mainly for climbing or sprinting when the rider was off of the saddle! The first rubber hoods were thus called "honking rubbers".

What today's bikes lose by having brifters is the extra forward reach that one might want to use while "honking" off of the saddle.
And the "short and shallow" sort of handlebar bend that fits with the brifter approach has less total range of drop and reach that would allow both a recovery position and an aggressive aero or sprinting position. This is significant because without the big range of hand position the rider is less able to sit up and recover their abdominal and arm muscles, and the chosen stem length/height becomes more of a compromise. With use of a higher stem clamp, the deeper-drop, longer-reach handlebar gives a more comfortable recovery position than modern bars without compromising the racing position.

I find that I can adjust to riding both modern and vintage bikes, but I do not position my hands so often on the hoods of the older bikes.

And I can brake hard from the hoods using Weinmann-style levers as long as the braking system is well-tuned with good pads and not too much return spring tension (why Dia-Compe centerpull calipers work better than Weinmann centerpull calipers, different springs).

I think the reason we have non aero and dual pivots ( expensive, heavy and complicated to manufacture) are because shimano knew shifting was going in the levers and brakeing would be compromised because of the cable entry.
It wasn't like engineers and manufacturers couldn't figure out a good lever ratio before 1985.
There are benefits to it but braking is not one of them.
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I think people ride on the hoods because it's more comfortable, more aerodynamic, and the bike is better balanced. I find it more comfortable on the hoods of my brifter bikes than any position on my non-aero bikes.

Also, I disagree that the bike ends up being shorter, since any loss in reach of the handlebar is more than compensated by longer stems AND the greater reach out to the brifters. For example, my two non-aero bikes have 80 cm stems and 95mm reach bars, whereas my brifter bikes have 110-130mm stems and generally 75mm reach. I also measured the location of the 'notch' where the base of your thumb falls on my non-aero bikes last night - 1cm forward of the furthest reach of the handlebars. Compare that with brifters, where it's 2.5 cm forward. So, I don't see how you're not farther forward, standing up grabbing the hoods on a brifter bike than a non-aero.

Add to that the fact that non-aero hoods are not big enough to accommodate your entire hand, so I end up with one finger in front of the lever, two fingers gripping the body of the lever and the fourth behind the bar. On brfter bikes, my whole hand fits on the lever body when riding out of the saddle, which I find much more comfortable and gives me a better, more stable and powerful grip for levering the bike side to side.

Further, the last 15 years of brifters generally include extended tops that allow even further forward extension, allowing riders a more aerodynamic position than the drops

Again, short and shallow bars are generally paired with longer stems, so total reach is at least as great as that on non-aero bikes. And bars generally have wider, more comfortable bar tops. I'll grant that drops are not as deep as they used to be, but I'd also note that this trend emerged because the drops were being underutilized, because riders found it uncomfortable to pedal any distance while riding in the drops. Funny thing - I'm actually able to use the drops on my non-aero bikes BECAUSE I've been using the drops on my brifter bikes, which has increased my flexibility. That and losing 30#, so my thighs and belly are no longer trying to occupy the same space!

I find the first 2-5 miles on the non-aero bikes, riding on the hoods actually hurts a bit. After that, either I get used to it or my hands unconsciously adjust their position. Brifter bikes OTOH are comfortable from the start. I also consciously work at riding on the hoods on the non-aero bikes

Every time this topic - braking with non-aero levers from the hoods - comes up, someone will always say they have no problems doing it, then they add a series of qualifications - new housing, freshly greased cables, perhaps specific combos of lever and caliper, aftermarket pads, etc. If everything has to be JUST RIGHT for it to work properly, then it's just not as effective as a system that allows you to brake easily even when set up suboptimally.

My other, barely related observation would be that I am much more comfortable using DT shifters after thousands of miles on bikes with brifters, because I've gotten so much more comfortable on the bike that removing one hand from the bars to shift is no big deal, whereas when I was a teen on my first 'Ten Speed', back in the 1970s, I hated taking my hands off the bars. I ended up installing stem-mounted shifters for that reason.

[QUOTE=genejockey;22119746Further, the last 15 years of brifters generally include extended tops that allow even further forward extension, allowing riders a more aerodynamic position than the drops

[/QUOTE]
The pro peleton still spends most of it's fast time in the drops. When you need to go hard, whether it be it time trialling, sprinting, leading out, chasing, or descending, you do it in the drops. Climbing may be an exception.

I like to re-watch 60 Cycles once in awhile to remind myself of what traditional road racing was like before the tech revolution. There's a lot of nuance to bike fit beyond what we've touched on in our discussion of brakes levers.

Sprinting and leading out, and descending I'll grant you, because that's when you need grip and control as well as aerodynamics. But watch the guys in breakaways. They're not in the drops. They're out on the tops of the hoods with their wrists resting on the bar and their forearms parallel to the ground. It's more aerodynamic than the drops, but it's harder to shift from = though you can, and I do - and you have less control than the drops.

Even more aerodynamic, and recently banned by the UCI, is the 'imaginary TT bar' position, where you rest your forearms on the tops with your hands out front, holding onto absolutely nothing. I believe, back before Dura Ace 7900 was introduced, they'd sometimes hold onto the shifter cables coming ouf the sides of the STIs.