I'm surprised to find that my vintage Campy Record brake levers have no spring. I guess they rely on the sidepull spring. Every other brake lever I've ever worked with is spring loaded.

What's the impact on braking performance?

I am rebuilding this bike and have no idea what to expect out of side pull braking. I assume KoolStop pads would be an advisable upgrade.

Most of the levers I've used have no spring, but my more modern bikes have them. If there is a significant change in braking performance, I have not noticed at all.

Yes, I'd use the Kool Stops.

Sprung levers only became common when convoluted cable routing under the handlebar tape and through frame tubes became common. Prior to that, the cable runs could be fairly direct and the additional spring in the lever was unnecessary.

+1

Aero brake levers were about the only thing that survived the short lived Aero Fantasy Fad of the early 80s. They're a PIA to install and replace compared to regular non-aero brake cables and housings!

verktyg

Chas.

You could, of course, get Shimano shifters with Aero routing of the brake cables and non-aero routing of the shift cables.

I'll use briftyers when they pry my cold dead fingers off of my down tube shift levers!!!



verktyg Retrogrouch

Chas.

I ran into this same sort of issue:

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vi...0-content.html

I think there's a nominal amount of resistance provided by the stronger, older springs. I think the stopping power afforded by dual pivots is more consequential than whatever decrease in spring tension.

Does that make sense?

I'm not a fan of cables coming out the top. Why? I can't flip the bike over and rest it on the hoods and seat. I find this much easier to install wheels.

Wait: Are you saying that you don't carry a length of light rope, or something similar, along with you to hang your bicycle from a tree, lamppost or whatever is tall enough so you can pull off your wheels when you get a flat on the road?

One thing I definitely can't recommend is building up a bike with older-style calipers and newer aero levers. The combination of the stronger caliper spring with the return spring in the levers makes the brakes less than a joy to use, especially from the hoods...

unfortunately the same holds true in reverse. Old nuovo or super record levers and newer campy dual/single pivot skeletons with weaker springs don't snap open fully in my experience. I was going to put skeletons on one of my bikes to get improved braking ,(also because they look sharp and not too out of place). But they don't release very well, especially the rear, and the levers don't snap back fully. That's how I figured out the newer levers must have additional springs...

I'm not a fan of resting the bike on the saddle and stem and bars... You can tell the people who do that by the effed up stem and saddle.

I just lift the bike up, pull the derailleur back, it seats, even it up and tighten the QR.

Even if you have this down, I struggle with this. For one, it doesn't work on the bikes where I put a 130mm hub into 126mm-spaced frame...sure, I could cold-set but I'd like not to have to cold-set just for this reason.

Even my newly-acquired 126mm Trek 950 frame needs to have its dropouts slightly stretched to put the 126mm hub in. For whatever reason the dropouts measure like 124/125mm.

I think they also shortened the lever pull sometime... So with many aero levers, there amy not be quite as much pull as the non-aero and the bike won't brake as well. Perhaps the brifters have gone back the other way.

I did finally get aero levers on one of my bikes. It is kind of nice not having the wires sticking up. Plus the wires under the bar tape actually seems to make the bars more comfortable.

Naw, I celebrated aero brake levers. When I raced in the '70s, I spent some of my long mile hours fantasizing about having surgery to place slots in my hands between my fingers so I could drape my hands over the hood! "80s came I and could do it! Hooray! No longer racing, but still, taping that bar was minor compared to getting that wish fulfilled.

I do echo you on the brifter thing. They should be saved for bikes that cannot fall over, with or with out rider on board. 'Till that day, not on my bike. (I do have SunTour Command on one bike. The cable routing pain, but it is rock solid SunTour, I don't have to mess with it much and I have yet to see a crash where that area of the HBs have been damaged.)

Ben

"One thing I definitely can't recommend is building up a bike with older-style calipers and newer aero levers. The combination of the stronger caliper spring with the return spring in the levers makes the brakes less than a joy to use, especially from the hoods... "

Funny, I haven'[t noticed that. My alternate HB setup for my fix gear is Tektro levers and Suberbe sidepull calipers. I do not use this setup in hills partly because the braking is too good for skid free sharp slow-downs on steep bumpy roads. (Dual pivots and V-brake levers give superbe panic braking in the drops, the very wide pista bars give great control and V-brake levers are a joy to climb on, They are huge!) Yes that setup, Dual pivot/ V-brake levers does not have full power on the hoods. For that setup, that is OK. But the Tektro/Superbe sidepull is great there.

Ben

(Edit: I answered the wrong post.)

The Tektro levers are long pull.
The Blaze or Shimano 600 levers are short pull.
The old Universal Non-Aero levers were somewhere in the middle.

The shorter the pull, the more leverage, but it needs to work with the rest of the components.

Perhaps I'll get a photo soon.

I used to drape my hands over aero levers on my sort-of first modern bike (Epic Allez), but I set up my bikes these days to have a wonderful fit with my hands in the drops for any reasonable amount of time as needed. This for me comes down to having the saddle-to-bars "reach" within a close range (about 21" using a familiar sort of saddle).

And I've managed to get aero or non-aero levers to actuate vintage calipers with a light-enough pull at the lever and with snappy return.

I have sometimes (with, say, Universal, Weinmann or ChangStar/ProStar sidepull calipers) had to "relax" the caliper springs a bit (by bending them) in order to have an easy enough lever pull effort for strong braking, and such relaxation of the springs really offers a seemingly disproportionate improvement in braking ease as the initial lever travel has the pads meeting the rim with no effort wasted.
It's all about good cabling runs (usually with Aero levers it's where the housing enters the socket in the lever body) and free-moving caliper pivot adjustment, such that the lever returns fully with good "snap" sufficient to prevent the levers from clacking over bumpy roads.
Some early Aero levers had a ferrule with ball-socket freedom of movement that often had the inner wire cutting away at the hole in the alloy spherical-tipped ferrule, with resultant months of "gritchy" cable action that might be discovered only AFTER the bars had been carefully wrapped!

I don't want to seem like I'm harping on you or being rude or whatever... My last post may have made it seem like that. Sorry.

The damage you do to the saddle and stem (and hoods) is permanent- My favorite stem has marks/gouges that won't buff out as a result of me flipping the bike over.

It's not too difficult to do this, you're not balancing anything, once you move the derailleur and get the chain on the cogs and you're resting the dropouts on the axle already- as you pull the stays apart the dropouts just drop right onto the axle- seating it. From there, you even it out before tightening the QR or nuts.

Since I'm rebuilding a bike with non-aero levers, I'm going to have to master this. Thanks for the encouragement!

I've definitely marred up plastic brifters from flipping over the bike, as well as putting some gouges in a Brooks saddle (GOOD, as I now hate Brooks saddles :-). Since then I'm careful to do it in grass. I've never marred a stem since that part of the bike rests on the brifter hoods rather than a stem. At least for how I set up my bikes.

Let's be clear; "stopping power" is down to coefficient of friction between the brake pads and the surface they're contacting, and likewise the tires. Not to be confused with braking effort, which is how much force it takes to squeeze the brake lever, relative to how much stopping force is generated. Most reasonable combinations of brake pads and alloy rims have all the stopping power (force actually), to lock up either the front or rear wheel and cause the tire to skid on dry pavement (or, in the case of the front wheel, the bike to endo).
Modulation is yet another subject: in a nutshell, the linearity of the ratio between the force applied at the brake lever and the resulting stopping force at the wheel.

I only have one brakeset with spring loaded levers. My Mavic SSC 440 brakeset made by Modolo.
I haven't mounted them to any bike yet, but I suspect that combined with the smooth action of the calipers, which I think actually emplys bearings at their pivots, the brakes should have a very light and maybe very precise feel to them compared to my other brakesets. Only thing I'm afraid of is the possible tendency to grab a hard handful of brake and going over the bars the first time I use them, as the light feel might not give me that progressive action that I'm used to.

I've got two pairs of garden variety 1990s Shimano 105 Aero levers that have worked very well with old school calipers; DiaCompe 450 sidepulls, Racer centerpulls and Weinmann centerpulls. Maybe the lever action feels a little heavier than with the 105 calipers they came with but not enough to worry about. They feel at least as good as the non-aero levers those older brakes were intended to use.