hey all you readers of this page... so i've decided to expand my range here, and include weird road brakes, tandem brakes, anything. not just mountain bike brakes, but anything non-standard (ie not your normal cantilever, centerpull, caliper etc) and cable-actuated, that works on the rim. so i'm looking for more pics, good large, high-res shots of any interesting brakes out there, and i'm especially looking for tech sheets of any kind - set up instructions, that kind of thing. sned anything you've got to brake_obscura@blackbirdsf.org.
im looking for pics of:
scott superbrakes
shimano dura-ace/600 ax calipers
jeay brakes (france, 1940s)
lefol calipers (france, 1940s/50s)
hooker tt brakes
and anything else unusual
when you're someone like me, who's not only in love with older parts, but obscure ones, you come up with silly ideas like this one. a page devoted entirely to obscure brakes. some of these brakes i have experience with, some i don't. if you've got more information on any of the brakes listed here (or pictures of them mounted on bikes!), please do feel free to email me and add your 2 cents. lord knows no compendium of "obsolete" componentry would be complete without a multitude of possibly conflicting opinions. what I'm intending to do is provide a resource for people like myself, who have a tendency to find an odd part at a bike swap, and buy it out of sheer curiousity.
what i'm interested in here, for the purposes of this page, is cable-actuated brakes with non-standard actuation or design - for the most part, i'm not interested in standard single-pivot or dual-pivot calipers, centerpulls (mafac, weinmann etc), rod brakes, v-brakes, standard cantis (including most long-arm variants), shimano u-brakes, suntour rollercams, hydraulic or disc brakes of any kind here, nor am i interested in prototype brakes that never made it to even the smallest-scale production. i realize that's arbitrary, but those simply aren't the brakes i'm interested in. i may change those criteria later, but that's my decision to make - information on those brakes is pretty readily available. these are the non-standard brakes, the ones that didn't make it to the big time for one reason or other (often with no connection to the facts of their effectiveness or feasibility...) - and some other brakes that may have seen larger-scale production, but were interesting mechanically all the same.
note that some of the text and pictures on this page have been blatantly ripped off from manufacturer's sites or whereever else i could find them. I'd apologize for that, but this is the internet, baby - It's all about cut and paste "plagiarism". If you've got a problem with me stealing your images or quoting your text, let me know and i'll fix it. i've tried to credit images and quoted text where i use it, but i make mistakes sometimes.
a big thanks to tim sexton for a large part of the original impetus for this page, and for some nice chunks of information on a variety of brakes, and also to brandon ives for yet more pics. anyone with anything to contribute to this page should feel free to let me know.
so without any further ado... the brakes!