Mafac Brakes.............

solosuperia

Whatever happened to the "back in the day" Mafac centre pull brakes?
I might be looking back through rose tinted glasses but my memory seems to be telling me they functioned well and were delightfully simple to maintain.
The only downside was the levers........... it was de rigeur to to substitute Universal levers for the Mafac ones.
Were they inefficient compared with modern Shimano/Campag offerings.
I recognise that discs provide much more stopping power and use them on my current bike, just wondered why Mafacs, or indeed that style of brake fell out of general usage.

rolf_f

I've used the Weinmann equivalent and the problem with those is you use up all the lever movement because the metal is so bendy. Don't know if the Mafac ones were any better. I think Tektro make a copy of the Weinmanns. Whether they are faithfull as far as the bendiness of the metal goes I have no idea.

The bridge cable makes them intrinsically sloppier than sidepull calipers. Tourers use cantilevers which suffer the same problem but allow lots of mudguard clearance which they need. Centre pulls are a bit neither one thing nor the other and have effectively been replaced by V brakes.