Carbon bike with broken brake cable stop; brake alternatives?
 

Hi,

I was at the beach this weekend when the cable stop broke off my c. 2009 Fuji CCR-3 carbon road bike, making the rear brakes non-functional. Some nice folks in a bike shop jury-rigged a solution involving electrical tape, so I could safely ride for a couple more days on flat terrain.

Now I want to see how to proceed. I've always loved the bike but the brakes have always been the weakest link.

So my questions are:
* what are reasonable solutions to properly fix the cable stop? It needn't look beautiful, but should be better than loose electrical tape
* how can I upgrade the brakes to something more modern such as disc or hydraulic. I understand that my frame isn't well suited for this, but perhaps there's a clever way to make lemonade out of lemons in this situation.

Many thanks ...

run a full length cable housing

Hey, as jideta says, the solution is to run full cable housing from the lever to the caliper, a good quality housing may make a difference on your brake performance.

Respecting updating the brake system of your bike, is a no go. You need mounting points on your frame and fork to bolt the calipers, and even then you would need also new wheels with disc hubs that can carry a rotor.

Hydraulics is just another kind of disc brake actuated by a fluid instead of a brake, for those you would need all of the above and new compatible brake levers.

Jagwire makes non-compression brake housing. Use it and the difference will be noticeable.

Full-length housing FTW.

I am assuming your bike has traditional caliper rim brakes, and these will work perfectly with full length housing. You can find some colour-matched zip ties to secure the cable to your top tube.

If the bike has cantilever brakes, or anything else that requires a cable-housing stop, you can get housing stops that hang off the seatpost binder bolt.

As others said, full length housing. It's already external cable anyway. Instead of zip ties around the top tube, lookup the adhesive cable tie mounts. They make them in black. Then zip tie the new full length cable to those.

Usually they have them at the hardware store with the cable ties. Or, instead of using those, you could buy a tube of 2-part epoxy and epoxy a new stop on.

I'd replace the bike. A crabon frame that old is bound to asplode soon. :innocent:

I will second this. I use it on our mountain tandem and braking is amazingly better.

Cable stops take far more force than most people realize. (The electrical tape "cable stop" is a placebo stop. Thankfully on the rear brakes, which I guess have not been used since the repair.)

Rear derailleur stops have almost constant load, but brake stops have essentially no load followed by relatively high loads during braking.

I had a rear derailleur stop fail, sent out the frame for an (expensive) professional repair, and it failed yet again within weeks. (It was borderline irrational to attempt to repair my five year old frame. For a ten year old frame, unless there is huge sentimental value?)

The only realistic alternatives are:

• Don't use the rear brake.
• Run brake housing all the way back to the rear Tiagra.
• Get a new frame.
• Get a new bike.

-mr. bill

Have you thought about your LBS?

If you're set on replacing the cable stop, there are a few clamp-on stops available. These will only work if your top tube is round and matches one of the available clamp diameters, so first measure your top tube's diameter where the stop goes.

bikeparts.com stocks a few different clamp sizes (28.6mm, 31.8mm, 32.0mm, 34.9mm, 38.1mm).

Nothing to add to the full length cable housing suggestion. As for the brake effectiveness. If you don't have high quality calipers - say Shimano 105 level or above - and good pads, consider upgrading them. My wife had no-name calipers on her road bike and I swapped them for 105 calipers and good quality pads and she (who is not a bike nerd) noticed an obvious improvement. So, new cable housing and better calipers and pads should do the trick.

Be sure to match the calipers to the levers, i.e. same generation of Shimano, or if SRAM, or Campy, same thing. I've found that there is mostly full compatibility, and I've been perfectly happy with mixing and matching. But if you're unhappy with brake performance, you'll squeeze the optimal performance if you match everything up. Minor differences might be noticeable for you if you're dissatisfied.

I understand, and won't argue with, those who are really fans of disk brakes on road bikes. However, rim brakes have been satisfactory at elite levels for decades, so they're not inherently "bad" as long as you have good cables, calipers and pads.

Correct, but in the case of the OP, discs aren't even an option as none of his frame, fork, or wheels are compatible.

I actually run all my bikes with full length rear brake housing by choice. My three customs were built that way and I do not use the stops on my one bike with them. I use the same housing as I use in front. I want the extra compression from the long housing run. Makes for much better stopping when the rear brake is nowhere near as effective as the front.

Ben

Well, yes, obviously as had been acknowledged in the OP and by others following. But he complained that his rim brakes were unsatisfactory and was wondering if disks were a possible solution. I was merely pointing out that rim brakes - in general, with good components and properly set up - are time proven to be an excellent design for road bike braking.