Brakes on top of the bar ?

Jtfab75

I had a road bike 20 years ago when I was a teenager, back then there was brakes at the top of the bar as well as the bottom, can I get a bike with the top brakes ?

My last bike was a mountain bike 10 years ago and I sold it after 6 weeks cause I didn't enjoy it like my road bike, any advice about what gears to have and anything else I should know would be great.thanks

roger_merriman

Jtfab75 wrote:

I had a road bike 20 years ago when I was a teenager, back then there was brakes at the top of the bar as well as the bottom, can I get a bike with the top brakes ?

My last bike was a mountain bike 10 years ago and I sold it after 6 weeks cause I didn't enjoy it like my road bike, any advice about what gears to have and anything else I should know would be great.thanks

yup sure you can get interrupter brakes, which work better than the older type of brakes. plenty of cyclecross bikes have them.

gears? most bikes have broadly similar stuff on most you change gear/brake from the brakes it works a lot better than it sounds. don't get to hung up on the techno babel, there isn't a huge variation to be honest.

lotus49

Those brakes were called suicide levers for a reason - they didn't really work.

As roger merriman points out, many cyclocross bikes now have interruper brakes on the tops, which work much better. Interestingly, some of the riders in this year's Paris-Roubaix were using them as well.

The subject of gears is somewhat involved. You have a choice between traditional (ie usually 53/39 ratios on the front), compact (50/34) or triple (50/39/30). If you are very fit or live in Norfolk go for a traditional crankset. If you are not so fit or live in Yorkshire (or anywhere hilly) get a compact. I'm not a fan of triples but they are appropriate in limited circumstances eg for laden touring bikes in mountainous county.

Apart from this, there are a load of other choices to make such as which manufacturer (Shimano/SRAM/Campagnolo) or which product in their line-up but I'm not convinced that any of these choices is as significant as which crankset you go for.

Have a read through the forum here. There are a lot of threads on the subject of gearing and there is a wealth of useful information here.

unixnerd

I have a pair of cyclocross brakes going spare, http://www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/cdale2.JPG
Yours for a tenner inc. postage, PM me if interested.

ugo.santalucia

Jeeez... some good advice here...

I use one cyclocross brake lever for the rear brake, as emergency if I have my hands on the bars... not sure why I chose a rear and not a front, but it did make sense at the time when I built it. They do work well and don't add much extra sponginess to the cable feel.
I endorse what said above about groupsets... there is a lot of choice of the same thing... stick to something reasonably priced in the Shimano range and you can't do wrong. I think Tiagra offers very good value for your money and it is quite robust for modern standards.