johnty

now i'm starting to regret what i did, but i've gone this far, and here's the story:

i have a schwinn voyageur touring frame that i built from the ground up. when i got it, the original fork and stem was totally bonded, so it had to be cut. i got a newer-style touring/cross fork. had it set up with a nice pair of purple coda cantis (the ones you adjust spring tension with a cone-wrench), and some old dia-compe non-aero levers.

fast forward 3 years of happy commuting/touring on the bike. the brakes work absolutely fine. however i decided to be adventurous, and got a set of dia-compe 287v's, and some avid single digit 7's. thinking it would be great to have some more stopping power of the v-brake, and also, just for the sake of trying something new.

the fork took the brakes fine - since it was quite wide. but there was absolutely no way the rear brake could have worked. the bosses are too close even for the narrowest brake-pad setting. the fact that i had a wider rim on the back made it even more impossible (if it were possible to increase the amount of 'impossible', that is).

so now i'm left with the following options:

1-put everything back the way it was
2-run v in the front, canti in the back:
--a.) how would the 287v's work with canti's?
--b.) get a set of normal 287's (do they still exist?), or something that look/feel close to them.
3- any other suggestion?

thanks!

The Figment

2-Run the V's in the front and the cantis in the back,just like in a car the front brakes do more of the stopping because of weight shift forward when you go to stop.

--a.) If both of the brakes are ajusted to your liking they should work fine together

This is the setup I used on an old Mt Bike that I used for touring,worked Great!

Pompiere

The V-brake levers won't work with the cantilevers, unless they have an adjustment for that purpose. Cantilevers require more leverage, so the V-brake levers will not apply enough force. Cantilever levers don't work on V-brakes because they bottom out before they pull enough cable. There are some dual purpose levers out there.
I am not familiar with the 287V, but I assume it is made for V-brake only? If that is the case, then you could look for a single 287 for the rear brake.

well biked

An adapter called a Travel Agent, used with the v-brake, will allow conventional brake levers to be used because the Travel Agent makes the conventional lever pull the correct amount of cable for the v-brake. Travel Agents are usually considered the "other" alternative to 287-V's when using v-brakes with drop bar brake levers, and are about the only alternative for folks who run brifters with v-brakes. I've never used them, but from everything I've heard, they work very well. The 287-V's are the only drop bar levers I know of that are really compatible with v-brakes, without adapters. Harris Cyclery carries Travel Agents, and you can buy just one if that's what you need-