elcraft

There is an aftermarket half hood maker; Rustines. See:
https://store.velo-orange.com/index....ke-levers.html

They appear to be only available in gum and black, though

mboro1876

Merry Christmas everyone. Racer front and rears are the same (for a given size) aside from the bolt, right?

F.Bacchus 

Correct. I have 2 pairs of racers and I took them apart completely to polish them with a dremel, was worried about this exact issue when I was putting them back together but yeah they're the exact same.

Unrelated but maybe this information will be useful to someone, I noticed some minor differences between the two pairs I have, one pair from 1976 and one from 1981. The lettering on the '76 is deeper and wider than the later variant, whilst the '81 is far easier to polish for whatever reason. The two years also differ in how they stop the mounting bolt from rotating, the tab on the mounting bolt that hooks into the brake is far thicker on one year, I forget which, but they're very much not interchangable.

jj1091

Not necessarily. My '71 PX-10 has different bridge plates for the front and rear, the rear having a bit more reach. This diagram shows 2 different part numbers for the bridge, so I suppose it depends on the year of the Racers.

Mafac Brake parts from Harris Cyclery

greg3rd48 

Mafac Racers fitted with KoolStop salmons provide great stopping power and as others have noted toeing them in reduces squeal greatly. I have them paired with Mafac levers on my PX10 and also put them on an A08 build matched with city levers.

Refurbished Mafac Racers by irishbx4th, on Flickr

Untitled by irishbx4th, on Flickr

IMG_0651 by irishbx4th, on Flickr

SB_Greg

This is one of my issues. I grab ever Mafac Racer I come across, disassemble and clean the parts for when needed. It is often the case that the plastic washers or bushings are cracked, chipped, or broken. This is my main bottle neck for restoring these brakes. I have seen (though I forget where) a fairly expensive source for brass replacements. But id love to find a cheap source for plastic replacments—minimally for the red plastic washers. Some enterprising individual could come up with a punch and then repurpose thin sheets of plastic (used for something else) for this purpose and tell us about it. At least thats what I am hoping will happen. 😝

79pmooney

My Mafac Racer joke that was quite true for a couple of decades. Want an almost NOS pair of Mafac Racers? You can find them at yard sales across the country. Drawback is that you have to remove and dispose of the UO-8 attached.

The $50 ancient almost new UO-8 is now very hard to find. I wish someone would set up and build the Racers again, forged and cheap. They were a great example of a very well designed and made product that emphasized function and a reasonable cost to build. I haven't used the copy Paul makes. They are beautiful, but it seams to me that it as awfully expensive way to make a simple product.

Someone above mentioned front and rear interchangeability. Yes, many Racers are and in fact you can replace the bolt wiht a standard hardware bolt and turn any brake into the opposite (front or rear). I took a set and replaced the rear with a longer bolt and mounted each as a front brake on two different bikes. (Did the same but front to rear with the OEM (probably Weinmann) CPs that came on one of those bikes.)

Conjecture - I'll bet the different front and back bridges on the PX-10 were a special run Mafac did for Peugeot. There is a long history of interworkings between the bike and parts/supplies manufacturers of the various countries. Reynolds and Raleigh. Mafac and Pergeot. Fuji, SunTour. Nervex made runs of lugs for a lot of bike companies (not just French - see the lugs on the Raleigh Competitions).

Ben

Dfrost 

Do MAFAC and Dia-Compe use the same size pivots? And how important is the spacing between pivots?

The braze-on posts that @gugie added to my Miyata 912 fork were spec’d and carry Dia-Compes that work very well using road pad carriers with Kool Stop salmons. But I’ve wondered whether a MAFAC Racer would be even better, with the advantage of being able to dial-in pad reach and angle.

BTW, I just added a Dia-Compe integrated cable clamp/QR (discovered thanks to the ‘cool components’ thread a few months back) when incorporating the new decaleur from Gugificazione. Great combination!

capnjonny 

You can make your own straddle cables wit "Racers"

Compitition's have a slot in the body that allows you to adjust the entire brake up and down in addition to the slots in the arms for the pads.

Something I just found out. The position of the pad stud in the brake affects the angle of the straddle cable and hence the mechanical advantage. Push the studs further toward the rim and it effectively decreases the angle of the straddle cable.

Same for Canti brakes.

gugie 

This.

There were lots of bikes built with cantilever posts in the 80's that were too close together. Dia-Compe made some very short arm cantilevers to work with them, and the mechanical leverage wasn't that great.

dweenk

Great thread and lots of information here.

gugie 

When I refurbish a set of MAFAC brakes (typically RAID's for 650b conversions), I press in new brass bushings (typically from Compass) and use 0.5mm shim washers front and back. The MAFAC ships are 0.45mm thick, sometimes I have to do a very light filing on the bushings/brake so the bolt doesn't bind them up. I reuse the rest of the hardware after cleaning it up.



Koolstop pads are the way to go on these.

SB_Greg

0.5 shim washers? I'll give them a try thanks!

Grand Bois

Harris Cyclery sold replacement plastic bushings for Racers up until a few years ago. They were black instead of red.

capnjonny 

Gugie,

Could you give me an example of a bike like that? I am unclear what you mean. The posts are brazed to the forks right? seems like they would all be the same distance apart unless the forks were wider or narrower. Now the canti arms might be longer or shorter and thus have different amount of leverage and the position of the pads in the arms in or out affects the straddle cable effective angle but what else ?

palincss

The "posts" he's talking about are the ones on the brake shoe. Push the pads all the way in and the arms of the brakes have to move out, and with a centerpull brake when the arms move out the ends of the arms move up.

tiger1964 

I had not heard of Compass before, so I bookmarked the site; but I saw a full hardware kit to rehab a set of brakes is $125.00, yikes! I'm getting ready to start a project bike (another topic here) with "Dural Forge" older Mafacs, that's lot of money for some bolts, springs and washers. Of course, it would be nice to be able to stop...

rmfrance

Racers are still findable here in France - I can't believe how many bikes were equipped with them. Given the interest out there, I'm wondering whether it might be worth saving those I come across in good condition, for the benefit of French bike enthusiasts.

jj1091

I'd save them all, you'd find a good market for them, probably a good bit of interest here on the forum.

merziac

There was a forum member quite awhile back that was tooled up to make the bushings, we pre-ordered and he got er done. Seems they were reasonable as I bought a couple of sets. Can't remember who it was.

Fahrenheit531 

[...19 months pass.]

So I'm about to start messing with the MAFAC Racers on my Raleigh. Checking BF to get a sense of factory setup, how to optimize performance, what's a no-go, etc.
There was a link to this pic very early on:



Which of course features Jacques Anquetil and a seriously long straddle cable up front. I'm gonna try this setup and see what I get, but doesn't this run counter to the conventional wisdom of shorter = better? (I originally set mine up according to this maxim.) It's clearly not stock, so a conscious choice by him and/or his mechanic. Thoughts? Anyone else run them this way?

UPDATE/EDIT: After running the long straddle cable as pictured above for nearly a month I can say there's no discernible difference in stopping power.

Peter1

Member since 2009, but just my 4th post:

Piggybacking onto this thread: I recently picked up a 1978 Lejeune mixte frame for my 12 year old daughter. It was a bit of a "find," as it had been in storage for at least 20 years -- 100 percent French parts, down to the Huret/Mafac gears/brakes. I've got the derailleur working as best I can, given that what I'm missing is new jockey wheels (about unobtainium bc of 6 mm bolt vs 4 mm now ... but that's another issue) -- so I'm down to the rear brake.

I removed both brakes, cleaned, greased, swapped dried up pads with red Kool-Stops, new cables. Front brake is now quite effective. But the rear brake...there are a couple of things going on that I can't quite put my finger on:

--The main problem is that the pads are all the way down in the slot, so I can't angle them inward to fully contact the rim. The other issue that the arms seem to be binding -- and when I pull the lever, the hanger seems to cock to one side rather than pulling the two arms simultaneously. The springs look fine; there seems to be enough tension. If I loosen the mounting bolt even slightly, the whole assembly seems to tilt down a few mms, and then I'm back to square one. The final issue is that if I loosen the mounting bolt, one of the arms will hit the downtube (the hanger goes around the downtube bc of it being a mixte frame)

--If I could move the wheel closer to the downtube, I'd be able to move the pads higher up in the slot and give me the ability to angle the pads upward. the rear wheel is mostly round, not 100 percent but side to side wobble is minimal, visually. I'm pretty sure it's centered in the dropouts. (It's about midway in the dropout slot, which SEEMS to be a reasonable distance). I probably need a new chain, but even if I have to slam the rear wheel all the way back in the dropout I should still be able to set up the brake arms, right?

--I think I've got a good angle on the straddle cable -- it's maybe 125 degrees, looks like the same set up I've seen in photos of correctly set up Mafacs.

--I suppose it's possible that the rear triangle is somehow bent, but the bike tracks straight, doesn't crab down the road and I've been able to get the rear derailleur to work despite what I think is a weak spring, sloppy chain, somewhat worn jockey wheels. And with the mixte frame there's the extended top tube(s) to add more strength, so unlikely it's torqued so much that it's affecting the brake setup?

--I wonder if it's that all the hardware is worn, and the accumulated effect is that I'll never be able to get the brakes to work OK? Or is there some kind of magic (silver?) bullet that I've overlooked?

**I think all would be (mostly) well if I could just get some more reach on the arms that would allow me to fiddle with the pad setup and get some toe-in etc...

Any and all advice is welcome.

TIA

JaccoW

Yeah I ran into that one last year with a Sachs Huret New Succes Touring derailleur. Modern sealed bearing alloy jockey wheels are usually too big but they come with plastic spacers. All you need to do is drill the correct size hole in the soft plastic spacer (which is trickier than it sounds). If you want I can take a look and see if I still have the old jockey wheels somewhere. IIRC they were still in failry good condition.

Peter1

I may hit you up for those -- I live in Paris and would be happy to pay shipping and a small fee for your trouble. I don't have enough posts to send you a DM but maybe you could do it from your end.

Re drilling -- can you give me a rough idea of how you did it?

Ged117 

Hi everybody. I've got a Mafac Racer front cable hanger question.

I would like to use my set of Racers with my 1951/1952 Sun Wasp "Massed Start" DB 531 build. They are great brakes, and would have been a somewhat period correct upgrade for the bike a few years after production. It would also save me some money in this build instead of buying GB Coureur brakes off eBay. The trick is that the front hangar (below) has its little tooth to fit into the top of the threaded fork, but the indent in the Sun Wasp fork is front-facing, instead of toward the back of the bike. I can't use this hangar.

Does anyone have suggestions on a similar one I could find that would work? Thank you.

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