Troul 

You will want to use bb7_road calipers with those brifters. Hard to tell from my viewing side the type you are equipped with currently, but it appears like you have bb7_mtn.

hokiefyd 

To pile on to what the others have said, it appears the calipers in your pictures are "BB7_mtn" calipers. Are these the original calipers (and brake levers) that came with the bike?

KC8QVO

As far as the brake system goes - everything is original from the day I took it home from the bike store and it was a brand new bike. The only thing that isn't the "same" in this as when I got it, obviously now, is the alignment of the calipers and rotors (and that should imply the adjustment in the cables also - I tuned them to have less pull on the levers to get stopping pressure earlier in the pulls, but still have enough gap in the pads to not rub while riding).

Kapusta

What kind of brake levers are those?

They may well be OK (some are made to work with long pull brakes (V-brakes and mtb mechanical disc).

Kapusta

He does not have brifters. Those are just brake levers, and may be long-pull ones, can’t tell from the picture.

The current Trucker complete build comes with mtb BB7s and Tektro RL520 levers, which are made to work with v-brakes and mtb mech brakes.

KC8QVO

You are correct it appears - the calipers say BB7- MTN on them. I did not look at them close enough before.

Attached are some closer up pictures of tje calipers and levers.

KC8QVO

Im trying to upload pictures and format on my damn phone and it is driving me up a wall.... Heres another shot of the brake levers.

Kapusta

If this was the stock build from Surly, I would be 99.8% sure that those are the right levers for your calipers. Tektro makes a drop bar lever for this very purpose. If you really want to make sure, find a model number on them somewhere.

Troul 

Good eye. I didnt see it the first time around.


I'd replace the housing & cable. If it were my bicycle, I'd swap in a rear bb7_road

djb

his levers are made for mtb BB7s. His bike is a stock disc trucker, all is well.

djb

KC8, I have the same setup on my troll, and my thoughts are in line with others--that not messing with working cleaning pads and rotors is best. Ive done the same as you, thinking it wouild help, but it seems it doesnt unless there is a clear issue. I lightly sanded my rotors a while back and eliminated squeal, but as someone mentioned, its always required to bed the setup in again, ie depositing pad material onto the rotors, for the brakes to brake properly.

the next thing that stands out to me is how you have set up the levers to have early contact. I have always found that later engagement gives me stronger braking with rim brakes with cantis, and I have found over the years now with BB7s that its the same with them.
Later engagement puts the levers to a position where my fingers have more leverage strength wise, and also more feel for modulating.

I really like late braking, goes back to my motorcycle days and racing, and all my bikes are set up with a slightly later engagement point, and I also found that with disc setups, a later engagement point can really seem too far compared to rim brakes, but they require a lot less cable travel to brake really hard, so thats how I set them up.

impossible of course to evaluate your setup from reading online, but you could do some tests to see if this helps.
And of course, we arent talking extreme differences/changes, but I certainly have noticed the improvement. Riding the troll rather heavily loaded in very mountainous places with lots and lots of steep ups and downs (such as Guatemala) has proved to me that my setup works very well and I have been very happy with the braking power of the bike in these situations.

another angle to all this is being sure that you brake very hard with the front brake, this makes a huge difference to stopping power and effect. I bring it up because its not uncommon for riders to be wary of the front brake.

oh, and I too have had pads get that funny "chip" off the corner, not sure when it happened, but mine looked very similar.

good luck with trying out stuff.

ps, the whole 1/3 2/3 thing is so that the caliper pad that moves doesnt "push" and bend the rotor over too much with braking. You can see this visually just be braking and looking closely at the rotor, if there is too much space on the opposite side, the rotor gets pushed over too much.
I once slightly bent a rotor with a bad setup while messing around with moving the caliper position, and had to straighten the rotor using an adjustable wrench (which went surprisingly well), so this is how I learned not to do this again.
This was right after I bought my troll and was trying to get to learn how to work on the BB7's. I reckon I made all the mistakes......