Dual Pivot Brakes For Older Bikes?

David White wrote:
Hello and thanks.

I own many older (read 1970's) bikes and have recently acquired one or two
modern (read 1990's) bikes. The latter have dual pivot brakes which I find to
be superior to my old Campy and Superbe brakes.

So I have been looking for dual pivot brakes to fit my older frames. I have
seen several models including Tekro, Shimano, etc that offer "long" reach
caliper arms. But all of these require frames to use recessed fittings and the
vast majority of my frames use normal, nutted fittings.

I know that I could use recessed front calipers on my rear brake brides with
nuts and I could drill the rear hole in my fork crowns to use a recessed
fitting. But I'd rather not. So are there any sources for dual pivot calipers
which offer normal, nutted fittings? If not, has anyone got a source/procedure
for longer mounting bolts that can replace the ones that come standard on this
sort of dual pivot caliper?

Thanks.

Hi David,
I just converted an '83 Nishiki road bike to Shimano R600 calipers.
The improvement over the old single pivot DiaCompes is dramatic.
It's the best upgrade I have done on the bike. Anyway, I had to
enlarge the holes on the back of the fork and the seatstay bridge to
accommodate the new style allen nuts. I used a UniBit and the job
was easy on the fork. For the seatstay bridge I had to use a right
angle head on my drill, but it worked fine. I think this is ok for a
steel frame, but I would not try it on aluminum. The results are
really nice and still very solid. I got some Kool Stop Dura Road
Holders for more angle adjustment for the shoes and the braking is just
unbelieveable now. The brakes were the only thing I ever really
disliked about that bike and now it's very nice.

wrote:
A few years ago, I sucessfully dissassembled a set of Shimano RSX dual
pivot calipers and rebuilt them using a countersunk metric bolt (5mm?)
instead of the recessed bolt .i got the bolt from my local hardware
store.A countersunk bolt was needed to allow movoment of the caliper
pieces over one another.

Interesting idea but I'm not following what you mean by a "countersunk
metric bolt".

Could you point me to the right basic shape as shown he
http://www.boltdepot.com/Catalog.aspx

Thanks,

Dave

pinnah wrote:

Interesting idea but I'm not following what you mean by a "countersunk
metric bolt".

Could you point me to the right basic shape as shown he
http://www.boltdepot.com/Catalog.aspx

"socket flat head":
http://www.boltdepot.com/socket-products.aspx

Jeff

METRIC MACHINE SCREW

wrote:

METRIC MACHINE SCREW

I don't think it's threaded all the way long, so it would be a bolt.

An anonymous poster wrote:

A few years ago, I sucessfully dissassembled a set of Shimano RSX dual
pivot calipers and rebuilt them using a countersunk metric bolt (5mm?)
instead of the recessed bolt .i got the bolt from my local hardware
store.A countersunk bolt was needed to allow movoment of the caliper
pieces over one another.

I believe your memory is playing you false.

Shimano caliper brakes use special dual-threaded bolts.

Nearest the head, they use a larger thread, I believe it's 7 mm, for the
parts that hold the caliper together.

Then it necks down to the normal 6 mm size for mounting to the frame.

This is true of all Shimano calipers I've worked on, single pivot or
double pivot, though the heads and lengths are different for the two types.

Sheldon "Special Bolts" Brown
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