Not of the reach of your Sam but my Rambouillet was considered to be a pretty far reach bike, specified for the longest reach caliper out there at the time which was a non-group Shimano part. They were fine and I replaced stock pads with something similar when necessary but I was alarmed by a long descent in pouring rain that came up during a local charity ride. It was like there was no braking at all.
I went beyond different pads and got a set of Paul Racer center pulls center mount version with the salmon pads and all is well. I have to admit I was in the market for more clearance around the tires so I could better size fenders to cover the 32mm tires that I found made the bike handle its best. Midlife crisis for my Ram: new calipers, 32mm RH EL tires and fenders that covered them with adequate clearance and didn't rattle during braking. I didn't undo the bars either, just modified the housing run and stop at the seat tube lug and replaced the cable. There's some Rambouillet in the Sam's blood. Andy Cheatham Pittsburgh On Monday, December 20, 2021 at 10:02:43 AM UTC-5 bjmi...@gmail.com wrote: > Good morning! > I picked up a 2013 Sam in late October and LOVE it for a billion different > reasons. > > However...one area where I really prefer my Atlantis is braking. I have > the Shimano DXR MX70 levers and v-brakes on the Atlantis and I feel like > the stopping power is incredible. This is my commuter bike, set up with > chocos for upright riding with lots of stops. > > Sam has Shimano Tiagra levers and the Tektro r559 brakes. They just feel a > million times weaker. I can stop, but it's a much more gradual experience > than the v-brakes. The braking feels squishy. Like...I pull the levers and > the pads hit the rims, but I can keep pulling the levers and there's just > not much that happens in terms of stopping. It's almost as if not enough > force gets transferred into the pads. > > The brakes are set up correctly, slight toe-in, arm that moves up toward > the rim has pad touching at bottom of braking surface, arm that moves down > toward rim has pad at top of braking surface. I think they contact the rim > with the appropriate amount of movement of the lever, too. > > I'm about to re-do all cables and housings (even though it kind of kills > me to undo one of Mark's bar wrap jobs). Any tips on getting a little > better braking out of this setup, or are the r559s just going to not be as > good as v-brakes no matter how nicely they're set up? > > Thanks for any and all thoughts! > > Ben in Omaha > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/9fba8402-e50d-4ffc-95af-cafeca8afe4en%40googlegroups.com.
