Trails

[ELX]

Hey dudes,
I was just wondering if any Brisbane DHers knew of any tracks pretty close to the Bardon/Gap/Ashgrove area that had some really steep terain and steep corners, like the kind of steep suff at the Brookfield course today. My turning on steep stuff is letting me down a bit. Also if anyone has any idea about how to make my V brakes work better. I allways seem to not be able to slow down enough before corners and have to resort to using my front brake to slow me. Some of you might have seen the result of this at the top of the course while i was practicing today. :P

Thanks Guys :D

[S.]

Um... your front brake provides about 80% of all your stopping power. If you're having to "resort" to using it, you're not braking properly - you should be using it WAY more than the rear brake.

[ELX]

no i mean that my back brake isn't working well at all and that i have to pretty much only use my front brake so i endo a fair bit. But anyway on steep stuff coming into corners you want to be able to slide the bike and i think the back brake might be a little more effective than the front for that.

[S.]

Get some Koolstop Thinline v-brake pads, if they don't make a difference then your brakes are shit/shot.

[fastrider gus]

yea i used to have them, they rock..
cant help with the tracks dude... look for some big hills..

[ELX]

Yeah i'm thinking of getting some 2nd hand XTR/XT/LX V's becase everything is moving up to disks now so quality V's would be pretty cheap. I was even thinking of getting some Hydro rim brakes. I can get disks because i dont have the tabs and i dont really trust the weld on ones. Next season i'll be getting my DH rig.

[lupine128]

try a booster if you haven't already.
it will help stop the stays from flexing under brakes.
also make sure that the rims are clean and that your pads are aligned properly.
almost any v brake can work fairly well if you check all that as well as use the kool-stop or maybe the avid pads.
if you are going to be upgrading in the near future, it pobably wouldn't be worth going to hydro. again you might want to wait and see if those help before blowing any cash on a new setup.

[ELX]

Yeah i'll clean the rims and get some new pads. Thanks for the advice guys.

[wombat]

You could get new calipers, but I had a couple of sets of 25 buck tektro jobs on my old bike which were awesome. Bets thing I ever did was get some Thin lines for them, great pads. Also, make sure the pads hit the rim square, unless you're really worried about squeal. Other than that, wind in a lot of tension on the springs (I used to bend mine by hand to make them stiffer) and spend your money on good cables, they'll make a huge difference.
If you really want new calipers though, look at Avid, they can't be beat, and Shimano's parallelogram pad setup gives me the shits.

[josh]

Hey TJumper I saw your crash, head first into Lindsays Dad!

Ouch!

You shook it off well! Good ridin little champ (:

[ELX]

It was more like head first into a rock. I thank my full face for protecting me on that one. I snapped the visor though.

[matt462]

As far as cable rim brakes go, you can't go past the avid arch rivals. Back in the day i put a set of these on and they were great.

[MrPlow]

My suggestion would be to set up your current pads before handing dosh over for new ones. Make sure they are square to rim (tow em in if u want to stop squeelin, but wrecks performance.) And get the most leverage you want. If you have em right outboard you get more leverage, but there comes a point where the spring don't work well enough (so bend em like Wonbat said) and they loose their feel, becoming spongy... Worth a try though, check the pic for explanation. http://www.farkin.net/forums/albums/1263.jpg