If you’re one of the growing number of people out there interested in experimenting with drop bars offroad, or wish to use v-brakes on a ‘cross bike for commuting and fender clearance, you’ll soon find that brake levers provide a distinct challenge to the setup.

Drop style brake levers pull less cable than necessary for v-brakes or most cable actuated discs to work properly. You either need to run road or cantilever brakes (which use the same cable pull), a little pulley on your v-brake noodle, or specially designed cable actuated disc brakes. Or you can use levers from Dia Compe or Tektro that pull more cable than usual, working well on mountain style brakes.

This is particularly useful in the event you are building up a bike from the mountain parts bin or wish to give drop bars a go on your current mountain bike, especially seeing that brake levers are quite a bit cheaper than new brakes.

Sometime in the future I’ll get into how to position your drop bars for offroad experimentation, as the setup is a bit different than on your road bike and requires a lot of adjustments to get everything just so for you.