The brakes on their way to a new home where they will be put to good use.

If you're looking for the perfect brakeset for your super-light C&V build, I have them here and they are free (as in no cost, gratis, etc.): a 244g Dia-Compe/Cane Creek 200SL set of F & R calipers. They need new pads but otherwise are in good to very good shape once you get the grime cleaned off (which might even drop a gram or two off that 244g figure ). I am pretty sure that these have some titanium hardware on them but I am not 100% positive. If you want them, PM me with your mailing address (CONUS only please) and I will ship them off sometime in the next few days.
John

Speaking of weight weinie brakes...

Levers, now that's a different story

PM sent

Yeah, CLB stuff can be pretty amazing! Is that design related to the old Altenberger? I think they used a shield motif, as well.

I have one of their seat posts which was purchased from Wallbike numerous decades ago, I bought it from an historical iBob from the middle of the Mitten. It's nice but I have to have all the holes rethreaded or Helicoiled, to put it back into deep-setback service. I think I overtightened it several times over! Not as stable as a Nitto S-84 and seemingly rather more fragile, but much much lighter, not to mention prettyier!

Those are like boat anchors compared to my hotrodded Weimann 500:


Almost stock except for an Italian-made Ti centerbolt. I forget who made it, there were at least 3-4 brands of aftermarket Ti centerbolts, with the central part that holds the spring made of aluminum.

I might make a spring out of titanium too, to shave another couple grams. Not too difficult, can be made of 6/4 welding wire. Jim Merz made some for his amazing weight-weenie Exxon Graftek.

Mark B

A to the OP for the give-away!

Wow, must be some bolt! I just went to the parts bins, dragged out the 500's that I rode in the 1970's, the brakes (along with Universal levers) that kept me from the $$$ for Campy at the time. With the regular bolt, but the long aluminum-finned Matthauser pads -- 149g.

Yes, props to OP, and apologies for thread hijack!
I think Mathauser finned pads are a bit heavy compared to the cheap-ass folded sheetmetal ones that came stock on the Weinmanns.
I also replaced a few little nuts, that I think are chrome-plated brass (?) or maybe steel on a stock Weinmann, with alu nuts. Milligrams saved!

My co-worker who bought a Teledyne in about '74 couldn't afford Campy (we both worked as bike mechanics...) so he used 500s, which he also drilled a string of holes in! Probably saved about as much weight as a paper clip, but it was pretty cool, I'll admit. A lot of the cheap parts he used were way lighter than Campy, and his Pivo stem was way lighter than a Cinelli. I think he used a Shiba-Western plastic seatpost that was about half the weight of a Campy and cheaper. Maybe a Nylfor headset? Also half the weight of Campy. Jubilee derailleurs. Fiamme Yellow wheels were pretty light back then too, not as light as carbon but lighter than most modern alu rims. Not cheap but not too expensive either. Tires was the only place you really had to shell out for the lightest.

Bulgie, of course you only left the brake shoe ends open on the side which does not oppose travel? Ancient scuttlebutt is that the brake pad can be forced out, and Surprise! no braking! However, though I've committed that incautiousness a few times over the years (actually in the time when I ran a set of those 500's), I haven't had a brake pad squirted all the way out!

Meh

These used to belong to Liz Hatch.

Wow, those are about the fugly-est brake calipers I've ever seen! But also somehow cool...

Very light and surprisingly good stoppers, just never trusted those titanium center bolts.

Bought them for a white and blue bike to see how light it could go and they fit very nicely
Not the prettiest brakes I know (that would be the TRP R970SL for me) but surely not that bad.

So no one took up the OP on his offer yet?

I'd be tempted just for the serrated mounting washers, it was pointed out those are available but I think at $6.50 per washer. But that would be wasteful of me as I have somewhat more brakes than I have bikes.

That's not a myth or mere FUD, it has happened lots. It made the paper in Seattle, front page I think, one time quite some years ago. A rider had both brake pads shoot out and died from having no brakes when she needed them.

The brake I showed the pic of is a rear, and those holders are facing the correct way.

Many if not all makers eventually went to styles that didn't have that potential flaw, but I still like the old style because I find them easy to replace the rubber, and I know how to install them correctly. The kind just like those old Weinmanns, except the sheetmetal is folded up on all four sides, are a bit annoying to replace the rubber on. Weinmann started selling retail-carded replacement shoes (rubber plus metal holder and nut/bolt), then Matthauser and them everyone, which bugs me. Why throw away the metal parts just 'cuz the rubber wears down? I know it's a small thing, and I understand why they did it, but it's not for me. And you kids get off my lawn!

Mark B

I put in my time as a bike mechanic in the old days using a vice to squeeze new pads into holders. But now, the idea of selling replacement pads for bike novices to install without guidance brings to mind the late Jobst Brandt's grim humor on the topic of manufacturers sticking with an iffy design, quote, "until the death toll becomes prohibitive." If I were a CPSC advisor back then, mandating closed brake pad holders would have been a no-brainer.

Your lament reminds me of the time that, during a visit to the New York Bike Show in around 1982 or so, I overheard our shop's somewhat eccentric head mechanic earnestly advising a rep at the Sturmey Archer booth that the company needed to begin selling cards of replacement links for indicator chains.

I think they are awesome! Could you imagine them in red and white...oooooo

Rewind to the third post

Touched by greatness (not to mention beauty); you win

She's sporting your basic black version here:



Looks to have VK branding, too.

DD

I'm surprised nobody had mentioned yet, CLB' way of putting the icing on their weenie Professionel sidepull brakes by using their brake cable set with Dural wound casings.I did it on my weight weenie Vitus Carbone Plus 7 weenie project bike. It contributed quite a bit to getting the bike to 16 pounds..... but the cable casings were so compressible and squishy that it feels like I lost over one third of the braking power than if I went with conventional wound steel casings. I really wonder how CLB would sell such things with any concience, especially if the lives of the cyclists they sold these to, depended on it.......... C'est la vie!!??

Same experience over here. Finally got tired of the loss of braking performance and flogged them to some unsuspecting, weight-obsessed Ebay buyer. Returned to the tried-and-true OEM Campy grey housings, and all was right with the world again

DD

The modern answer: momo
the C&V conspiracy theorist answer: they were ahead of their time in the planned obsolescence game.
the C&V non-conspiracy theorist answer: the marketing department did a better job promoting lightness than the manufacturing one, this lead to the modern answer as well, although accidentally.

bulgie and perhaps others….

Has anyone heard of, or perhaps did it themselves, lightening a part and tempering it? I’m thinking it would be a not-so-great idea but I isn’t a metallurgist.

Short answer: No.

First I need to point out that tempering means to reduce the strength of a part or material that's too hard and brittle, to get some ductility back, increasing the toughness. So I don't think tempering is the word you want there, you mean heat-treating. Heat treating can (often does) include tempering as part of the cycle, but it's generally used to mean increasing the strength or other desirable properties via one or more heating/cooling cycles. Though it often is just stress-relieving, which doesn't generally increase strength but can improve reliability and dimensional stability. Annealing, which is making something as weak and soft as possible, is technically a heat treatment, but the way "heat treated" is normally used, it means strengthening.

Heat-treating is a vast subject. We're used to hearing that a part is heat-treated, but those two words hide a huge amount of complexity. There is not just one heat-treatment for any given part or material, there are an infinite number of choices the engineer can make, to get desired properties and avoid unwanted compromises.

The heat-treat steps vary widely from one material to the next, and you usually don't know what material a part is made of. Further complications include the fact that a lot of materials used in bikes aren't heat-treatable, or there's no benefit to it. Forged parts gain strength from cold-working, and you'd lose that in a typical heat treat cycle.

One exception, where you do know the material, is the machined-from-billet parts where they tell you it's 7075 T6. In other words when it's already heat-treated and you're not going to get more strength by doing it again.

I'm not going to say I don't use heat-treating; I do. But I'd never attempt to heat-treat a brake caliper that I drilled holes in, which I think is what your question is getting at. Too many unknowns, too little potential upside, and death as a potential downside.

Mark B

I had them on my road-race bike for a few years. Not as bad as some make them out IMHO. Braking power is not reduced one iota if your brakes are adjusted right. Yes there is a spongy feel at the lever, but unless it causes the lever to bottom out on the handlebar, you can still get the same braking "power". Assuming we all agree there's no point in more braking than your tire traction can use. I could still skid the tires: QED. Plus I liked the fact that you can modulate the brakes more by how far you pull the lever than by force input. It works out to the same thing, but I just felt like I could tell more precisely how far I pulled the lever than how hard I pulled. Or I got better feedback... or something. Anyway I liked the feel. I only replaced them due to them getting damaged somehow (don't remember); it's true they aren't as strong/durable. But they lasted a couple seasons at least, good value all things considered, no regrets

My wife's light road bike still has the CLB housing. Mostly because it came in a cool color she liked, but as an ex-racer who can do all her own mechanicking (most anything short of wheelbuilding or framebuilding), she knows what she likes and God help you if you try to tell her that she's got the "wrong" parts on her bike.

Mark B

bulgie You read me perfectly and thank you for the ejukation. Material science obviously isn’t my thing ergo why I was a liberal arts major.

I love those. Not only are they light, but they are also excellent brakes.

I used a pair on the one weight weenie build I did a couple of years ago. The goal was a fendered credit card tourer in my size at no more than 10kgs. By just weighing pretty much everything I had in my parts bin I managed to get it down to 10.00 kgs exactly.