V-Brakes on a Surly Long Haul Trucker

I realize that this post will probably disappoint or offend people who are purists in some sense of the word. Either the Surly-can-do-no-wrong purist (and I am awfully close to being in that camp) or the it-has-always-worked-for-me purist.

I bought my Long Haul Trucker in August 2008 and I figure I have about 8,000 - 10,000 miles on it. I bought it stock, and other than replacing worn out chains, pads, cassettes, etc., I haven't made any changes to the stock setup. Oh, except that I wrecked it once and bent the handlebars about 60 degrees, so the bars aren't original now.

To date, I have been really, really happy with the LHT. It gets abused by me, I don't lovingly handle it like a kitten, and it takes it extremely well. My only complaint in the past 2+ years of daily riding has been the stock canti brakes. First, I'll say that they are fine, most of the time. I've been riding them without any significant issues on a daily basis. I replaced the stock pads with KoolStop dual compounds and have run those for over a year. Even with the KoolStops the wet performance is not great, and I have to be very aware of my environment with a loaded bike in the rain.

I also have not enjoyed the maintenance and seemingly endless tweaking/aligning of the canti brakes. Even something simple like changing out the pads is much more involved with a canti brake than a caliper or V-brake. So I have been considering these factors for a while and thinking about an upgrade.

There are usually 2 concerns with running V-brakes on a road or touring bike. First is that cable pull for a direct-pull (aka v-brake) setup varies from a traditional cantilever or caliper brake. V-brakes require a lever to pull twice as much cable as a regular road lever. There have been a few solutions to this over the years. Dia-Compe made a road lever for direct-pull brakes called the 287 but I believe these are now discontinued. QBP makes a product called a 'Travel Agent' that acts as a pulley to change the cable pull ratio. These mostly have a good reputation but I've also heard of a decent failure rate.

Cane Creek/Tektro also each have a road lever made for direct pull brakes. The Cane Creek brakes are basically a dressed up version of the Tektro levers. The Lexus to their Toyota. I decided to go with the Tektro levers at half the price of the Cane Creek ones.

Issue #2 has to do with fit and compatibility with racks, fenders and all of the goings-on of a touring bike. As you'll soon see, I didn't have any problems installing or fitting the v-brakes.

So, last week I ordered myself some Avid SD-7's and the Tektro RL520's in black, and today I went to work in the garage.

I took her for a very short spin around the neighborhood and the brakes felt great. The hoods on the levers aren't perfect, they feel a little too skinny for me. But most days riding the LHT I wear gloves so that won't be a big issue. I'll run the stock pads that came on the SD-7s for a while and eventually swap those out for some KoolStops. In all this project cost me about $100 in parts including new cables and housing. Overall this was a pretty easy project and I think it will be an upgrade I will be happy with for a long time. I am sure there are lots of people who will be willing to tell me that there was no reason for me to do this and that I'm a moron who can't adjust canti brakes. But now I don't have to deal with that or worry about my braking performance, so there.

(Special thanks to my new Nikon SB400 flash for some sharp pictures in my poorly lit garage!).