Originally Posted by
Camilo
Oh yeah, that's been in my repertoire for years with this bike and others.
It depends very heavily on the particulars. In the pre-MTB era, cantis commonly used short pads that were positioned to swing clear of the fork blades, so there was no limit to how far they could swing open. Nowadays most canti pads will hit the fork blades, so how wide they can open depends on the geometry of that interference, and on how far apart the blades are from each other.
The Rat Trap Pass ELs on my gravel bike measure just a bit under 2.1" wide, and I can squeeze them through my v-brake pads when they're inflated. But that bike is built from an old MTB frameset.
For instance, it's sometimes tough getting a 28mm past the rim brakes on my road bikes
Sidepull calipers often suffer from a separate issue, which is that the quick-release causes them to open by a certain amount rather than to a certain amount. So how wide of a tire can be squeezed through depends on how far you set the pads from each other, which mostly depends on how wide the rim is at its brake tracks.