seaneee

Hey all, I have an old malvern path racer with a slotted rear brake mounting braket (see pic). At first I though it was so you could adjust the brakes up and down to accomodate different wheels. Then I cam across a set of vintage campy brakes that seem to have a mounting bolt to fit this type of set up (see other pic). Can someone set me straight.

Thanks.

Saintly Loser

I believe that what you see on the brake is a drop bolt. It's designed to effectively extend the reach of the brake, not to fit the odd brake mounting hole on your frame.

As to the frame, I've never seen anything like that.

LWaB

seaneee, that type of seatstay bridge used to be very common but that was going back a fair few decades. That drop-bolt brake has nothing to do with it.

MKahrl

Can you also adjust the height of the brake on the front fork as well?

You need a nutted rear brake. These were common up until the eighties and finding an old set of sidepulls or centerpulls will work.

Wait until Grant Peterson sees your frame. He'll be building bikes to fit 26", 650B, 700c and 27" tires and rims in every size combination without changing brakes or even adjusting brakepads.

Grand Bois

My wife's Raleigh Super Course mixte has a slotted brake mounting bracket similar to that. It made switching from 27" to 700c wheels easier.

seaneee

No, the front brake is fixed.

That makes sense though, 'cause my understanding of a path racer is that it was an all-in-one racer that you could swap out parts for the track or the road. It's got track drops on the rear, but also has a cable braze on under the BB that makes it seem like it could work with a rear derailuer (sp), the spacing on the rear is also 130mm, little wider than your typical track bike.

As for the Grant Peterson thing... I have a bridgestone 400 that I recently converted from 27" to 700 without any reach problems whatsoever using the orginal brakes. I thank him for that.

Thanks for everyone's help.

tomacropod

?? sounds like it might have been respaced! I can't think of any hubs which would have been 130mm in the day of this bike. Even the 4sp/fixed flip flop hubs were still 120mm I believe. The rear end of my 194? Malvern Star path racer is 110mm.

- Joel

seaneee

Joel- Not sure. I should check it again, I measured from inside of both drops and it came to slightly under 130mm. like 129 or so.

The bike itself is a bit of an anonmoly. It has no serial number anywhere, the age guess was a combination of a suggestion from Rolf Lunsmann (who dated it from 1970-1980ish) and a couple of guesses I made on based on other Malverns with the same decals. It's also weird 'cause the front drops also seem a bit narrower than a standard axel.

tomacropod

I dare say you're looking at something older than 1970s. If the front spacing is smaller it may be an 85mm spacing in the fork, coupled with a 110mm rear spacing this was found on many old English (and, by extension, Australian) track/road bikes. More pics of the whole bike would help a lot - particularly the headtube lugs, dropouts and BB shell.

looking forward to it!

- Joel