Help setting up cantilever brakes (Kinesis Crosslight 5T)

[madjh]

From stock Orix are fine for comuting, tralvels and little more. But if you add some Koolstop H11 dura 2, or the H7 ... they change and have more power. The stock compound of the pads are not the best. The brakes are fine like this one. I would start checking the pads. They look basic pads.

 

[legrandefromage]

Cantilever brakes used v brake pads too

That type of cable stop will flex more than a headset or stem mounted one

 

[stephan]

Cantilever brakes used v brake pads too

That type of cable stop will flex more than a headset or stem mounted one

Aye I get the old "Canti Judder" at the front if I am trying to stop from high speeds.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Aye I get the old "Canti Judder" at the front if I am trying to stop from high speeds.

That's due to cantilever design, how they function. Has to do with the twisting of the fork blades as the brake is applied.. "Bite, fail, slide, bite again, and repeat". A loose headset amplifies the shudder. Toe in helps eliminate the "Bite, fail" portion. When setting the pads, place a piece of thick card stock (or double up a business card) between the rim and the back edge of the pad.
Now, when the forks flex, pads grip evenly on the rim instead of doing the brake pad shuffle

 

[stephan]

That's due to cantilever design, how they function. Has to do with the twisting of the fork blades as the brake is applied.. "Bite, fail, slide, bite again, and repeat". A loose headset amplifies the shudder. Toe in helps eliminate the "Bite, fail" portion. When setting the pads, place a piece of thick card stock (or double up a business card) between the rim and the back edge of the pad. View attachment 868605
Now, when the forks flex, pads grip evenly on the rim instead of doing the brake pad shuffle

Thanks, need to try that "place a piece of thick card stock (or double up a business card) between the rim and the back edge of the pad"

 

[legrandefromage]

Canti judder. Yes, I have an Alan that likes a good judder. Solved it with a brake booster. No amount of pad toe-in would stop it

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/22608688...486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

 

[bikeworkshop]

Fork- mounted kona-style hanger helps too - the distance "hanger to straddle" has a large effect.
Remember the first spesh tricross?
Not only was it the world's ugliest bike ever, in hilly Bristol, the stock setup judder could actually cause a crash! Quite a few owners resorted to fork swap, but we found the fork hanger fixed most ok. That flexy carbon canti fork was beyond the reach of toe-in

 

[legrandefromage]

I did the warranty replacements on those Tricross, but using a fork mounted stop doesn't cure the poor braking for this not a Tricross bike

Under load, the forks are twisting away from the wheel so the back of the pad hits the rim losing braking power. Fitting the booster/ bridge keeps the forks as rigid as possible allowing the toe-in to make use of the front of the pads progressing to the whole pad contacting the rim

 

[DrDaveTampa]

The other advantage of KoolStop pads is, they are self-toeing basically (there's a little tab of rubber on the leading edge that gets it just right). Problem with shims is, you need four hands (instead of three ... unless you do the rubber band trick, then you only need three hands). With KoolStop you just slap em in and go. Wait, no: you slap em in and stop. There ya go.

If fiddling with cables starts getting ya down, you can consider one of the "one-arm" style canti hangers. The advantage being, you only need two hands to install em.

Shimano is currently offering the so-called "link wire" which is easy to set up, problem is, finding one where the arms are the right length ... the couple of times I've used them, they coulda been a couple mm shorter. I like my brakes crisp, so I have to keep that straddle to an absolute minimum. Suspect they are optimized for the Altus canti's they usually ship with. Which, as it turns out, are decent brakes, actually.

Another option is something like the Suntour Power Hanger. While the Shimano Linkwire has only one cable parameter to adjust, the Suntour hanger still has two parameters. Thing is, you can easily adjust one at a time, and see the results as you go. With only two hands. Takes a little longer to set up than the LinkWire (balancing spring tension can get interesting) but I think it's a heck of a lot easier for a mere mortal to get the brakes feeling really good. Also solves two problems at once, it's both your straddle cable and your cable hanger, so you can save a little bit on hardware and clean up the front of your bike some. High speed, low drag. Not for everyone I imagine but I kinda like em. Cheap clones are available on Amazon.

 

[Woz]

My 2p worth.

There's a few things. First up, in general, a fork mounted cable is better (explained later), but that Tektro one is bit flimsy and built more for integrated headset / forks. The older Kona style or knock-offs (some Raleigh branded ones from years ago) work really well on a steel fork and will just clear a normal cartridge headset. A bit like this. I've always replaced the bolt with a Ti one and drilled forks for allen key.



Second up, a lot of fork column hangers for threadless forks are also a bit naff, don't clear headsets properly and unevenly finished; the absolute best is the Shimano Pro one (now very very unavailable). Very similar to this IRD one.

It is thick and squared off very well and does not cause an odd effect off adding pre-load to the threadless headset and momentarily compromising steering and braking at the same time. That is the essential benefit of a fork mounted hanger, but does have a down side of having more brake cable outer which can compress. This was the biggest ill designed piece of crap I have used - nightmare to preload and a nightmare for the hanger to stay in a vertical position. Not the first time I've been disappointed with an overrated Ritchey product.




If it's a threaded fork and headset there's plenty of fairly decent alloy cable hangers about. Personally I got rid of every handle bar stem that had a hole for the cable hanger - not because they didn't work well, because headset or handle bar height adjustment would be faff with sometimes an additional need to adjust the front brake.

Another alternative - that more-or-less became fairly defacto in CX for a short while that avoided many problems are mini-Vs with MTB cartridge pads. Easy to set-up and do all the shoe toe in as mentioned above.

As for the OP, those look like some very nasty brake pads. As for setting them up, you want the pads to hit the rim square on when the vertical portion of the arms are indeed vertical. After you tweak straddle cable length depending on how much rim clearance and brake lever arm throw you want - straddle cable at about 90 degrees when the pads hit the rim is a fairly good start point in most cases.