View Single Post
Old 01-29-23, 06:04 PM
  #5562  
ehcoplex 
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2021
Posts: 1,710

Bikes: '38 Schwinn New World, ’69 Peugeot PX-10, '72 Peugeot PX-10, ‘7? Valgan, '78 Raleigh Comp GS, ’79 Holdsworth Pro, ’80 Peugeot TH-8 tandem, '87 Trek 400T, ‘7? Raleigh Sports, ‘7? Raleigh Superbe, ‘6? Hercules

Mentioned: 17 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 766 Post(s)
Liked 1,625 Times in 774 Posts
Originally Posted by VintageSteelEU
When I was putting centre pull brakes (Vainqueur 999) on my Grand Sprint, one of my main concerns was the front cable guide. Basically, the headset I use is Stronglight P3 (or a variant of it) with stack height of around 33mm because it's probably the lowest stack height one can find in French threading. The point of getting that one was to make sure the locknut threads on fully onto a short-ish steerer tube. I can't really go for much more than that, because the locknut might possibly have very little thread to grip onto. So putting an extra spacer in there (like the Weinmann headset cable guide one I'm using right now) makes me a bit anxious. I check the locknut before every ride and it seems to be doing alright, but I'm always a bit paranoid about it.
Tektro have a fork mount cable guide, but it would look out of place on a 70' bicycle and then it's for cantilever brakes, so probably would require some modifications to work with centrepull calipers anyway.
That model 951 or 801 gives me an idea for a custom solution: take a standard Weinmann aluminium spacer (that chunk of aluminium that goes between the calipers and the fork) or just make one, cut a spline into it on the flat side (thus making sure that anything put in there will clear the bottom cup of the headset as well as sit firmly in its position), then take a flat piece of thick steel just wide enough to go into that spline, shape it depending on what is required and add the cable adjuster on top. Looking at my bicycle now, I think the cutout for the cable anchor bolt wouldn't be necessary. I'm probably overthinking it a bit though, because the current solution seems to be working so far. And I guess grinding down a bit of the French serrated washer on its non-serrated side could be a less labour intensive approach.
Thatnks for the link anyway. The reach is probably too much for any of the frames I have (generally one requires more or less 57, 67, the other 57, 57 and one I'm working on will be eventually getting side pulls with 57, 57 reach), but the design is very interesting and uncommon.
There are a few other options to think about- there's a cable guide that clamps to the stem, I think Velo Orange sells one. Maybe not quite as out-of-place looking as the Tektro guide... You could also drill a hole in the 'reach' part of the stem... A little bit tricky, and no doubt there are those who would wail that doing so is courting death, but pretty clean.


ehcoplex is offline