nurul said:
Hi thanks for the ideas there. I even wanted to run dura ace callipers with my record brake levers but the LBS said that it wasn't the done thing. Well I am just not happy with rear braking on chorus calipers as they just lock on descents and in fast situations. ( yes I have changed the blocks and use them with 3 pairs of wheels). I have heard that rear dura ace callipers are far more progressive than campy and have more power. Would having two quick releases, though, be antagonistic???
You can use almost any brake caliper that suits your fancy ...
Shimano calipers ARE stiffer (a good thing) ... but, heavier (there is more physical material + the weight of the quick release) ...
For your riding/braking style, you apparently need the cheapest/hardest (!) blocks you can get OR
you may simply need to back the pads away from the rims so that there is about to 2.5mm of space between the rims & brake pads when you aren't closing them [
of course, some people may think of a 2.5mm gap as like having a Grand Canyon like chasm between their pads & rim ... it's what works for me].
One shop in my area sets the brake pads so they are barely more than 1mm away from the rim ... apparently, actuating the brakes involves PULSING them (or, so I have been told by the person who says he
loves having his brakes set up that way!?!) -- where's the modulation!?!
The close pad-to-rim setup style is obviously one that I don't follow ... maybe, on my part, it is out of habit ... on my bikes, the brake lever is probably about halfway to the handlebar before the pads are locked onto the rim, and I guess I can squeeze the lever (e.g., "panic" stop) another half-inch as the pads "compress" & cable stretches.
You should only worry about having two quick releases if you are either a weight weenie or slave to fashion (nothing wrong with either).
Having two quick releases can be a good thing, particularly for a CX/touring/whatever bike with fatter tires -- a quick release is a very small amount of added "dead" weight on a bike with Campy levers.
BTW. I have used Shimano dual-pivot calipers with several Campagnolo ERGO shifter setups, but in some cases it was because the components started as a particular Shimano Group ... in others, it was an intentional choice to mate the Shimano calipers with my Campagnolo shifters.
For a several seasons, I was using some "recent" DiaCompe calipers (a copy of late-80s/early-90s Campy calipers, BTW, which also appeared as relabelled Cane Creek single pivot brake calipers about a half-dozen years ago) on my "Winter" bike & they confirmed
for me that
it is how you set them up rather than how stiff the calipers actually are ... the Diacompe calipers had very good modulation & were certainly stiff enough to bring the bike to a complete stop when I needed to (20+ MPH to ZERO in about 15+ yards when I mis-gauged how long a traffic light was going to stay green ...), so the chasm-like 2.5mm
gap was not an impediment to stopping the bike [at the time, the levers were a set of alloy Chorus Ergo (but, all the Campy levers are the "same") ... and, I have subsequently changed that set of Diacompe calipers for some vintage-to-the-bike SunTour calipers for cosmetic reasons].