Once Again, MAFAC Pads
 

So, as detailed here, I installed some MAFAC "Racer"s on the '71 Raleigh. They look great, they feel great...

The front screams like Rob Halford.

And, since the pads are of an unknown-but-way-too-old age, I'm thinking of swapping.

I don't have any particular attachment to the 4-dot holders. (They're whatever ones were curved at the front and satin-finish aluminum.) And all-in-one canti-post pads are plentiful and cheap. Even the Kool-Stop Thinlines are 2/3s the price of the 4-dot inserts, and the black Dia-Compes are half again cheaper than that. Thus the question asks itself: What have y'all used, and how did you get along with them?

Are there any with the ability to adjust toe-in not-stupidly? (Yes, bending brake calipers with a long-arsed lever as an "adjustment" is friggin' stupid. Even, indeed especially, if it works. Leaving aside the embarrassingly large potential to break the brake, "adjustments" are by definition temporary.)
RANT_MODE=off

--Shannon

Respectfully disagree, it is practical, easy and quick, and doesn't come out of adjustment. Also since you're talking to at least a few fellow BF'ers who do it, it's not very collegial to talk about us that way. I'ver been beding them since the '60s.

I'd give that some credence if you could show even one Mafac that broke from being bent for toe-in. In all the hundreds I've worked on and thousands I've seen, nary a one broke there. Never even heard of one. Zero is not large, certainly not embarrassingly large, so your word "potential" is doing some weird heavy lifting there.

Now, if you were talking about Universal 61, then I'd agree, any attempt to bend them for toe-in will cause them to snap almost immediately. Mafacs on the other hand are forged, which means basically shaped by plastic deformation. They're made by bending, so obviously made of metal that can be bent.

Your definition doesn't match mine. Never heard of such a definition before, maybe I need to get out more. To me, adjustments that are temporary are defective; I like adjustments that stay adjusted.

You asked for ways to toe them in, and I'd give you two or three ways, but I'm afraid you'd call them all stupid, so I won't.

Aside from a couple of Peugeot UO-8's with the OEM Rigida textured rims, I've never had any Mafacs that had more than a minor squeal, maybe noticeable at that final hard squeeze just at full stop. I did have one set with the salmon-colored pads that gave out a noticeable buzzing, but no squeal. I just assumed the buzzing was part of the deal to have a pad with more grit, and more stop.

I've had countless bikes with Mafac Racers/Competition/Dural Forge and they've all performed well for me. I just do the same exact sequence on every bike from the initial purchase/restoration; and after disassembly, cleaning, polishing, lubing, adjusting the pad posts, setting up the straddle, etc, etc, they just continue to work flawlessly, so I guess I've never understood the complaint of "notorious squealing". I've just never had it.

I take on a restoration process that involves every single little part getting a full restore. The little red plastic bushings get individually cleaned, polished, lubed, reinstalled, checked for fit. Every washer, pad-post, nut, pad housing, pad itself - gets cleaned, sanded in multiple grades including 0000-grade steel wool, then polished with polishing compound, pads sanded off to expose good rubber, every spring gets a 4-level sanding and polishing to be rustfree and shiny. The arms and mount have all the casting marks sanded off the edges, then sanded and polished. The mounting bolts, washers, nuts, are derusted, sanded, polished until they shine. I'd imagine I easily spend 8 full hours on each caliper.

I just make the assumption that every single little part is no more or no less a contributor to the effectiveness of the total operation. Maybe one part sets up that chain-reaction of vibration, that folks chase ceasingly, I don't know. Maybe it's exactly like the anti-squeal lube you have to put on your calipers when you do a car brake-job, do everything perfectly but forget that lube, and it's a squeal-fest for life. But, yes, that toe-in adjustment check is a necessary part of it, but for me I almost never have to do any actual toe-in bending. Seems like all those other steps make it a non-issue.

My dollar-and-fifty-seven-cents-worth...

Long ago, on a Gitane-in-the-trash rescue, I broke a Mafac arm trying to adjust toe-in. Since that time, I adjust using a rat tail file to the washer thingy or if in a hurry, a big file to the pad.

BEND EM!

Any old smooth post canti pads fit in place of the four-dot holder. I’m using KS thin line pads for front & rear on 2/5 of the MAFAC equipped bicycles in our household.* Primarily because I had a pile of them and the KS four-dot replacement blocks aren’t inexpensive. Additional bonus, the thin line pads have some toe-in built into their design.

*All bent, none broke.

The rat-tail file trick works as well if you’re patient. Search around on the forum for links and descriptions as to where to purchase bulk alloy washers that’ll fit if you want to make your own without modifying the originals or spending beaucoup bucks at Rene H.

Since you originally asked about pads, I use the Kool-stop thinlines on all my MAFAC equipped bikes. Reasonable price and work great, even in the original steel rims. I have not noticed any difference between the all black and black/salmon versions though.

Oh and I have always bent the arms gently for toe-in - always being about 50 years since my first AO-8.

Shannon, I use Kool Stop Salmon on my Mafac-equipped bikes. It's wet here in Seattle.

In re: filing the Mafac under-the-brake-post washers -

Don't.
They are thin enough anyway that with time they will crack and break.
Then you don't have brakes anymore.
If you *must* angle the pads that way look for the CLB washers, they are thicker and have the scallops already.

For only the most extreme of MAFAC fiddlers: The omnipresent jungle website has some washers that are a very close match to mess with, without potentially ruining the stock washers. There is a thread somewhere here on BF if anyone is interested. It’s been a while, but as I recall I needed to give them a slight ream to open up the ID, score with a gunsmith file, then open up the brake post groove with the rattail.

Anyway, getting off topic. The Kool Stop thin lines or four dot replacement pads work fine. The latter being more prone to squeal, in my experience.

As Click and Clack said, Americans don't care if their brakes work, as long as they don't squeal. And Europeans don't care if their brakes squeal, as long as they work. You could think of the squealing as a feature, warning others of your presence.

Folks have already offered many solutions. Filing the backs of the pads is OK but takes some trouble. Instead, I bend. Keep a list of bendable and non-bendable calipers if you like. Weinmann and MAFAC are on the bendable list.

Yes, kinda. Several years go one could buy them from Velo Orange. They stopped selling them when they realized the only time they moved any kind of quantity was when there were on sale.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1997dbf49f.jpg
Left: (threaded posts) works with modern cantilevers, sidepulls, and non-MAFAC style centerpulls
Right: (non-threaded posts) works with MAFAC style brakes, but not available separately now, AFAIK

Both use the same conical seat washer system, allowing some angle change. The MAFAC syle has a long allen screw inside the "ribbed" cylinder.

Welp, it looks like I'll be bending me some calipers. Or just putting the Weinmanns back on. (Of course, this being me, they'll probably howl like the hounds of Heck now. Nary a peep from them before.)

I don't have a BFC, though. SFC, yes, but small enough to fit into a seatbag... I doubt this will provide sufficient leverage.

And sorry to those I offended or annoyed... it's always seemed like a terrible way to do things. Offends my sense of rightness. I was hoping that somebody had found an equivalent to the modern "eyeball" washers that works on the Mafacs. Sounds like not.

--Shannon

Will these not work?

https://www.renehersecycles.com/shop...J6HklYId0Ksw4Q

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e1399d82cc.jpg

Sure seems like it. And of course Jan Heine has solved a 60+ year old Mafac problem. Dude sells 115-dollar rebuild and upgrade kits for the things. I should reach out to them and ask if they'd send them out with my next BQ... paying shipping for 4 grams of aluminum seems a bit much, even for me.

I wonder if you could achieve similar results with the existing washer and a file? I might try it with the Cane Creek (not really) pads I just bought. (20 bucks for 4 @ LBS, and they threw in some eyeball washers, which may or may not work.) Even if they're not great, they've gotta be better than old black 4-dots from the Nixon administration.

--Shannon

* Yes, I'm still trying desperately to avoid the "brute force and ignorance" routine. If you've read the Tragedy of Shannon's Sugino, you'll grok my abject terror at the thought of trying to correctly bend anything.

I bent brake calipers daily when my hands were not as strong as they are now, and I used a 6" adjustable wrench. I promise you, this is not as big a deal as you seem to think. I suggest you take the wrench with you on a ride around your neighborhood. Bend, test ride, bend, rinse and repeat.

Add "Racer" brand brakes (not MAFAC Racer) to the list of unbendable calipers. I think they might have been made by CLB.

I can't figure out why they notched both sides, seems like that requires them to go still deeper on the toed-in side. Just notch one side of the collar, less filing needed that way, more metal & strength retained. Plus then it's immediately obvious which side goes toward the rim. Notched both sides, unless your eye-crometer is that good, you might have to measure to see which notch is deeper.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7fc447342b.jpg

Not that there's anything wrong with the RH parts really, they're fine, it just seems suboptimal, in a nitpicky way. (Do these rants make my ass look big?)

Anyway, if you don't have a chainsaw sharpening file, march down to the general store and get a couple. They're cheap, and I like them because they don't have any taper, they're a straight cylinder. Of course if you have a "rat tail" file already, you can save yourself the trip, just about any file will work. They don't even care what diameter, a notch at too large or too small a diameter will still work fine.

I have even done them with a flat file (or a belt-sander), just take the top plane of the collar down a bit on one side to some slight angle off of parralel with the opposite plane. Works just as well as a notch, in fact better in one regard: you can fine-tune the amount of toe-in by rotating the collar, infinitely adjustable within the range of zero to whatever angle you filed the top plane at. Hard to keep track of the orientation though, unless you mark them somehow. The "half-pipe" notch you get with a chainsaw file is more brain-dead simple to install.

I realize you're talking about a bike to ride, not a wall-hanger, but this is C&V and presumably we like old bikes. I like to keep at least some of the old-bike look, and modern brake pad holders are a bit jarring to my eye. So I always use original Mafac holders, with KoolStop repro 4-dot pads. And I wish everyone else would too, so they'll keep making them! The various repros they make, also for Weinmann and Universal, are a wonderful service they're doing for the C&V community. I think that should be applauded, and have money thrown at it!

So far, new pads (Cane Creek canti-post, look just like the Dia-Compes, 20 bucks a bike's worth at the LBS,) and the injudicious application of a half-round file (which I bought to trim the seat tube I bought for the crank / BB Bravo Charlie Foxtrot on the PPPKN-10,) to the weirdo notched / slotted / whatevered washer / spacer / thingie seem to have silenced the Mafacs, and without whacking my scary bone.

Thanks to Piff, bulgie , gugie noglider, Jan Heine, and everybody else who has contributed to the C&V storehouse of Mafac lore.

Adjusting the things is still a nightmare of unintuitive interactions, but as you do it wrong, over and over, making different mistakes each time, the inner logic of them slowly reveals itself. And, yes, there is one... it's French logic, (Frogic?) but it is a logic. It seems to have been based on the basic principle that the smaller a part is, the more parts of more jobs it should be doing simultaneously. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would have loved these things.

Tomorrow, I'll take her out again. I got pretty durned close with lever positions before the howl drove me from the saddle, so if I've got the brakes dialed in, I should be taping bars in the afternoon.

--Shannon

I often say that MAFAC brakes are terrible if not set up properly, but are pretty dang good if you know how to set them up properly.

Even the 1st time, and applying no more than "this is how bicycle brakes work" general knowledge, I managed to make them work pretty well. Better than the Weinmann 610 / Carlton levers, albeit not by a ton. They felt great to squeeze, and stopped the bike as well as any roadie could want. If not for the Godsawful noise, I could have happily ridden them like that.

For those, like me, who prefer a longer-travel, slightly 'soft' lever feel, they're pretty excellent. (Cue twin-lead air guitar lick and Historical Babes.) I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't care for the feel of dual-pivots... too light-switch-y... but likes the way they stop bicycles. Good centerpulls split that difference in a way that I quite like. The Weinmann 610s with TRP RRL levers do not suck, and the Mafacs are looking like being noticeably better, even with older levers. On a bike where it wouldn't look ridiculous, dialed Mafacs with the TRP RRLs would be the absolute bidness.

--Shannon

Yup. I worked as a shop mechanic when the most common brakes were Weinmann, Dia Compe, and MAFAC. Shimano brakes were rare then. MAFAC annoyed me but I did so many of them I could probably do them blind now. All the criticisms are fair but now that my fingers remember, I like them a lot.

We could drift onto the topic of levers. MAFAC levers seem to favor big hands. Lucky I have big hands. And they're not too comfortable, so there's that. But the attachment method -- a bolt sticking out of the band -- is much reliabler than the Weinmann way of a weird-shaped nut attached to the band. Campagnolo and Shimano smartly chose the MAFAC way.

I solved exactly this issue a couple of years back - make your own (cheap) copy of the Rene Herse washers.
Full details: https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...racer-toe.html

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...82927bc374.jpg

Edit: And Koolstop make Mafac 4 dots pads, I use the salmon ones.
https://koolstop.com/products/ks-mr-mafac

I have rather small hands but can handle the MAFAC levers ok on a couple bikes. But I prefer old Nuovo Record levers. They mate well with the pull ratio of the MAFAC calipers and are of course comfortable.

They were among the very best non-aero levers ever.

Spence Wolf at Cupertino Bike Shop usually always substituted Weinmann brake levers instead of the Mafacs on drop-bar bikes.

The Mafacs levers pull a lot of cable, but they also require a large hand and a lot of hand stremf. Maybe Sonny Lisston would have liked them ?

I'm not sure about later Mafac levers with the full gum hoods - maybe they changed the leverage ?

Yours was the thread I was referring to in some earlier posts. I used your experience to make some of my own.

Would’ve loved if RH had a listed phone number one could call, so I could’ve just asked them to slip some in an envelope instead of the auto assigned online shipping fee. Alas, I just made my own.