I go with the drilled Weinmann levers with the built in QR, got them on all my bikes.
I did try the (half hood) Mafac levers but they rattle, don't have QR, and don't fit my hands as nicely.

Edit: I normally operate these with 2 fingers from the hoods, works fine.

WRT the rattling thing: I discovered (probably on here) that the traditional tried and true practice was to lightly smack the lever body near the pivot with a hammer. It works.

You should see people jump out of the way when you hit your MAFACs. Better than a bell.

Risky though, because if you go a tad too far and they bind up, it can be very difficult to loosen them. Tap lightly with the hammer, increasingly hard until it just barely tightens them, then let well enough alone.

The drilled Weinmann have plastic bushes which stops any rattling without the use of a hammer.
I'm not saying hammer adjustment is wrong, just I would rather not have to do it.

I'm sure everything I'm about to say has been said here, but I've been riding those brakes almost 60 years. 80,000 miles (plus 30,000 miles on Mafac cantilevers of the similar vintage).

Those RACERs are famous for the squeal. When the pads were new (and young), stopping power was simply excellent; even if bystanders had to cover their ears. Tweaking calipers for toe-in? We all did it and those of us who rode MAFACs are still alive (or passed from other causes). I used to try to optimize squeal for low volume on routine stops and howling with a powerful front brake lever grab. Very useful tool for Boston traffic. When a driver pulled a careless or a**hole move on me, I'd hit that front brake, sit up and point to the car. Every pair of eyes for a block around turns to look at me, then follows my point to the driver. Driver comes out of his stupor and realizes everybody is looking him! Driver slinks off like a guilty cat. It was pretty funny.

KoolStop came into existence as the original MAFAC pads were hardening beyond good. (Thank you, KoolStop!) They work with considerably less squeal. Really good pads and work superbly with all the Mafac brakes. They come in black, salmon (a brick red) and a mix of the two. The salmons are the best pads out there if you want to stop in the wet going down a very steep hill but they pick up a lot of road grit and so can wear rim sidewalls fast. The black pads are excellent dry road pads and OK in the wet but not great. The mix is in between. I'd use the pads that best match your average riding. I live in Portland, OR and ride the black on an old race bike that has no business being out there in the wet, the mix on my good bikes and the salmons on my rain/winter/city bikes.

So is there a big difference between salmon and black pads ?
I've always just got salmon because why not,
but it turns out I'm retired so I don't really cycle in the rain unless the weather turns on me.

That made me do a double-take, after the post right above yours said to hit them with a hammer.

Yeah the hammer whack was mentioned (not by me) as a way to tighten up Mafacs. Hopefully no one would do that to a Weinmann, since it wouldn't help on those.

I know some people dis the Weinmann design, but I think it's brilliant, especially from a manufacturing point of view, so easy to make and at the same time so effective at doing the job they were made for. They're tough too, able to withstand a decent amount of crashing and other abuse. There's a reason they were on 18 bazillion bikes, especially if you throw in all the knockoffs from DiaCompe, Cherry, Chang-star and who knows how many others. But the bazillions of them might make modern riders forget they were also the best, until Campy arguably made a better mousetrap. Even at the very high end, Spence Wolf liked them, as did Rene Herse. Plenty of pros won races with them.

Did all of the Weinmann levers have the rectangular hood like the OG Carltons on the Raleigh? Because I'd like to shake hands with the dude who designed them.

Because I want to know what kind of weirdo Mr. Roboto rectangle hands he had.

It's like an M44 Mosin-Nagant I had years ago. The very first time I shouldered it, let alone shot it, I thought, "Who in the hell did this thing ever fit?? It's gotta be someone, right?"

The DiaCompes I'm using now are so much better in the hand.

--Shannon

Unfortunately they have nothing to keep the two ears of the blade apart, so with use and time[1] those move inwards, sometimes completely off the bushings.
So then they rattle and wobble.
This can be fixed - take them all apart and bend the ears outwards to suit.

[1] I've had some wobbly ones where the amount of use and time appears to have been zero.

I don't think they migrate in from time or use, I think it's always gotta be a whack of some kind, like bike fell over. Something exceeded its yield strength. That could happen on a brand new bike before the first round the block test ride, if you're unlucky. But the likelihood of seeing a whack like that definitely goes up over time.

Maybe reefing on the mounting screw could do it? You've got to get them tight enough to not move under a ~200 pound rider at full honk... 70s aluminum is pretty soft stuff.

--Shannon

I don't think so, the lever blade is not in the load path for the tightening to the handlebar, I think it cannot be stressed by tightening that bolt.
Are there any new alu alloys used on bikes since the '70s? They had 2024 and 7075 back then, I haven't heard of anything stronger, though I am not an engineer, no finger on the pulse of the alloys world.
Weinmann used a very ductile alloy because their brakes and levers are forged, basically shaped by smushing, so they have to have a high capacity for smushing. Also, the strongest alloys no doubt would be avoided for cost reasons. But for surviving crashes, I'd rate the Weinmann right up there with modern alloy levers, probably better than lots of them. Campy old Record (sometime erroneously called NR) levers were more more likely to fracture in a crash than Weinmann. The blades are tough but the cast "perch" is brittle. Weinmann were tough in the perch as well. Probably 5x as tough as the old Universal 61/68 levers, though those can be broken if you sneeze too hard.

The ductility of Weinmann stuff also allows you to safely straighten them after a crash. I think they chose their alloy very well.

I used to bend them back in my LBS days, but now I prefer the washer approach.
The linked post showed the UK source for the spacers. Here is the US source:
M10 aluminum spacer 10-pack 10x16x4

I use both, and my observation is that the red is a bit softer and stickier than the black.
Since riding conditions change so much, I don't know how you would determine the difference in effectiveness.

One thing I've noticed is that the red seems to be more prone to squealing on a humid day. Here in the Midwest, we get some very humid days in the summer, and that can cause my brakes to squeal... and these are brakes that wouldn't squeal in drier weather. A bit of hard braking helps heat the pads and drive out the moisture, stopping the squealing for a while at least. On my vintage bikes, the brakes are Campagnolo Record side pulls, and I get a bit of squealing. As always, squealing is also dependent on any play in the pivots, so proper adjustment is important.

I don't recall getting any squealing from the Weinmann centerpulls on the Raleigh International, though, and it has the red pads. The short distance from the pads to the pivot must make them quite stiff, and the plastic pivot bushings don't have much play. Or maybe I just don't ride it on the really humid days because I don't want to sweat on it??

Anyway... I don't see a huge difference between red and black.

Steve in Peoria

+1
I don't have any way of testing but I trust KoolStop to some degree. If they say red is better in the wet, maybe they have the data to show that, but I don't care! I use black 4-dots on Mafacs because it makes the angels in heaven happy to look upon them, all's right in the world.

I'll admit, I'm that shallow, I like my Mafacs to look like Mafacs. And they stop very well, even in drizzly Seattle. If some other pad was night-and-day better, maybe I'd use it, but I don't think any such thing exists.

I commuted through the winter the last 5 of 7 years EVS at the hospital before I retired 5 years ago, rain bike was/is an alu Fuji, Ultegra brakes with skinny pads, salmon pads were crucial for safe/ok travels.

I got some half and half one time in a pinch, no bueno, had to get full salmon on there.

I'll kinda agree on the Mafac's but can't afford to be picky any more, get what ever I can cheap and actually like the salmon as an accent these days.