Originally Posted by
sstorkel
Do you have an explanation for why this is true? Because it sounds a bit ridiculous to me...
I'm a reasonably competent bicycle mechanic and have tried the brakes both ways. When braking from the hoods, as the OP wants to do, I get much better results if I run the brakes on the tighter side. This seems to be especially true for people with smaller hands, who can't achieve the same mechanical advantage as someone with larger hands when braking from the hoods. When I run the brakes loose, I actually have less lever travel once the brakes touch the rim and thus less ability to modulate the brakes!
I've run my brakes both ways, and I'm actually preferring the "loose" version that we're talking about here. It hadn't occurred to me
why until reading nitropowered & Banzai's posts.
When they're super-close like my LBS tends to set them, the brakes start grabbing before I can get very much of my fingers around the levers -- and I wear XL-sized gloves. From there, the levers can't move much farther before either locking up the brakes or they're finished squeezing the bejeezus out of the brake pads.
When I set them up myself, I try to get a balance so that I can lock up the brakes while using the full travel of the lever. The levers, then, move a bit before the brakes engage, but they'll still lock well before the levers get squeezed against the handlebars themselves. By that point, it's just like they say -- I'm able to use a fistful of squeezing effort rather than just the outer joints of my fingers.