Dawes Horizon

rothai

I was thinking of buying a dawes horizon but i've heard that the brakes are **** for stopping with a loaded bike, has anyone out there found this and if so it it possible to change them to Vbrakes?

blorg

The brakes seem to be low profile cantilevers which are indeed **** at stopping when combined with STI levers, loaded or unloaded. You cannot change them for standard V-brakes (standard V-brakes are incompatible with STI levers) but you can change them to mini-V brakes. I recently did this with my own tourer and the difference it made to stopping power was phenomenal (I nearly threw myself over the bars on my first trial!) The brakes I got were Tektro RX-5. They are a bit of a speciality item, I got them from Germany.

Morgan

Cantilever brakes can be set up to be very powerful - it's just a bit more fiddly than with v-brakes.
http://sheldonbrown.com/canti-trad.html

You can use regular V-brakes with road levers if you use a "travel agent" also.

rothai

cheers fellas