BikingViking793 

I'm thinking about changing my Cross Check from cantilevers to mini v-brakes. The cantilever work fine, but I just think the mini brakes would look better. But I actually can't find many pictures of them installed on bikes so I'm just guessing they would look better. I just don't love how wide cantilevers are and all the exposed cables. Hoping people can share pictures of installed mini v brakes and also their experience with them. My bike is mostly a road bike and I have Campy Veloce levers.
The brakes I'm considering are the Yokozuna KM40, Box Three, and TRP CX8.4. Want them to be silver or have some silver on them.

Germany_chris

Fentuz

I have mini v brake on road bike and while they are OK for summery gravel ride on winter road use, I would not have them for cyclocross as they do not have enough clearance. I raced yesterday with my daughter, took me 10min to clear my disc bike, took 30 min to clear her V brake bike... the V brake lever were jammed with grass and mud.

bluehills3149

Here's my Redline Conquest with Tektro mini conversion.
edit, These run 9spd Campy Veloce levers and work great. The dual quick-release of lever and caliper is very handy to get the wheels off. They also have an in-line barrel adjuster you can see in the pic to facilitate fine tuning.

tinkerbike

Campagnolo brake levers have a short cable pull, you'll need a set of 80mm mini-v brakes to get the best performance. Even so the pads will need to be set close to the rims, otherwise the lever will bottom on the handlebar before the brakes really start to bite.

I'm running a silver Tektro 926AL on the front of my Soma Double Cross with Veloce Ergopower controls. This brake really stops the bike! The button brake release on the Campy levers helps to yield enough cable slack to get the noodle out of the brake to open it up.

The other thing to know is that the brake pads protrude back into the fork and can limit the amount that the brake will open to clear a bigger tire. For road sized tires you should be okay.

DorkDisk

I've had great luck so far with the 8.4s and Shimano levers. Normally I go straight to Koolstop pads but I kept the stock ones and they've been fine so far.

msu2001la

I ran the TRP CX9 mini-v for a few seasons of cross back in my rim brake days. They provided more power, but you have to run the pads super close to the rims so mud/wet grass/etc got jammed up in them really easily.
The modulation kind of sucked - the levers feel really mushy.

I eventually switched back to standard cantilevers (Avid Shorty Ultimate) and found that with the right setup and good pads, they worked better - though they do require a little more hand strength on the levers.

I don't have any good photos of my setup, but if you google "TRP CX9" you'll find loads of them.

tFUnK

Did it more for function rather than looks 🤷‍♂️

BikingViking793 

Which Tektro is that? Looks good.

BikingViking793 

I'm not sure anyone still makes 80mm. Most the options seem to be 85. The shorter they are, the farther the pads will be out also right?

tinkerbike

Well, yeah, with shorter arms you can set the cable tension to have the pads slightly further from the rim and still have a brake that stops the bike before the lever bottoms.

The arm length determines the leverage and the distance the pads travel for a given amount of cable pull. Where the pad is set in the arm for any given fork/fame will make some difference, but generally longer arms need more cable pull. Shorter arms have less leverage, but move the pads further for a given cable pull than a brake with longer arms.

Anyway, if you can't find 80mm mini-v brakes, a set of 85mm might work, but you'll have to set the pads even closer to the rim for short pull levers like the Veloce Ergopower.

Finally, I think that switching to mini-v brakes should be done to improve braking performance rather than for aesthetic reasons. A mini-v brake doesn't have the same level of tuning that you have with various cantilevers designs - there's no straddle cable variability, and cantis generally have more pad angle and pad extension to play with to get the power and clearance you might want. Since v brakes don't have a straddle cable there's the benefit that fork chatter is greatly reduced or even eliminated. The main advantage that v brakes have is the direct near-parallel pull across the arms and the resultant power to really bind the pads into the rim. However, this can make the brake feel like it has less modulation. I have bikes that run a canti in the back and a mini-v in the front. You don't need as much power in the back, and the front is where the power to stop needs to be. V brakes are also very sensitive to rim irregularities - a seamed rim will cause the brake to pulse on every rotation, so machined rims are required for smooth operation.

Fentuz

I just swapped my old XLC mini brake (very corroded by winter salt) with a new set of tektro 926AL, they are 80mm long and have ~10mm clearance with a 35mm tyre.

tFUnK

Mine are the Tektro RX5. Pretty basic, with 85mm arms I believe. Works well with brifters (have used Ultegra 6600 and SRAM 10 speed) and MTB levers (Avid FR7 with adjustable pull).