Philips SafeRide Mount with Centre Pulls?

[Rhodrich]

Now that the nights are drawing in, I've pulled out my old hack bike, with the intention of using it as a winter beater. It's a 1974 Viscount Aerospace Pro (fitted with a steel front fork, not the death fork fortunately), and Weinmann long reach centre Pull Brakes.

I've got a Philips Saferide 60 that I'd like to use on the bike. I used to use it on my old Orbit Touring bike (now sold), but there doesn't seem to be a way that I can mount it on the Viscount, as wire for the centre pull brakes get in the way of the bracket. Looking at SJS, there are plenty of brakets for B&M's and Schmidt lights, but none that are designed for centre pulls, and none that are designed for Philips lights. Does any one have any ideas as to what I can do? Ideally, I'd like something that mounted to the fork crown, went underneath the brake, and up in front.

The other slight problem with the bike is that the long reach calipers at the back don't quite meet the rear wheel brake tracks properly, as the frame is designed for 27" rims, and is currently fitted with 700C ones. I guess the other solution could be to go for new extra long reach brakes (e.g. Tektro R559), which would solve both problems, but given that it's a beater, I really don't want to pay lots of money.

Does any else have any ideas (or some cheap extra long reach dual pivot caliper brakes that they'd like to sell me!)

Thanks.

[meic]

For the rear brakes, I found that it was the combination of thinner rims as well as being 4mm less on the radius.

If you think of the geometry of the brake arms, as you apply the brakes their effective length gets shorter. This can be addressed by having deeper pads to keep the arms nearer to parallel when braking.

So some of these may keep your Weinmanns working. Or anything else you can find that gets the pads further in.

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/BSJACCBS/j ... rake-shoes

I bought some of these, they need stripping and regreasing every couple of years, not being the best of quality but they were much better at stopping you than the Weinmanns. The pads above would help on these too, if using thin rims.

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php ... b0s100p149

They were too long for my front brakes though.

[tyred]

You should be able to buy mounts sold for cantilever brakes which should be fine (they are with Mafac centre pulls anyway.

[Rhodrich]

Many thanks! I think I'll go with the Alhonga brakes, and take it from there, once I've done a proper measurement of the drop required. To be honest the Weinmann Brakes sucked even when the bike was fitted with 27" rims, so I'm sure these ones can't be any worse. I'm sure the stock lamp bracket will fit with them.

The rims are Mavic MA40, so not especially narrow, or especially wide.

[MikeF]

I have a Philips SafeRide 60 which gives an impressive front light. However I noticed that some reports say the fork mounting bracket can fail which might be dangerous.

I've mounted my light on the narrower part of Deda Compact RHM 01 handlebars using one of these brackets.

I bought (eBay) a 70mm allen head bolt to pass through the wider width of the mount of the SafeRide and a slightly long clamp bolt. It's possible to pull the lamp wires through the reflector clamp if you are careful, but for the rear light wires I needed to do this individually, and not as a pair as they have connectors attached. Mounting the light on the handlebars keeps the light out of the dirt and makes it easy to reach the switch when cycling, but I lose a small amount of handlebar top and I don't think I could use a bar bag, but for me that's fine.

[IanW]

[quote="MikeF"]I have a Philips SafeRide 60 which gives an impressive front light. However I noticed that some reports say the fork mounting bracket can fail which might be dangerous.[/url/

I have 2 instances of the Saferide 60 which are of subtly different vintage.
On the older one the fork mounting bracket is pathetic.
It is stamped flat inside the reflector and it is stamped flat in lines across the fork crown mounting hole.

The newer bracket has been re-designed *a bit* and is of an improvement, but not very much of an improvement.

Therefore on both instances I have replaced the OEM brackets with these brackets: http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/schmidt-headlight-bracket-for-edelux-prod23928/?geoc=us (58mm x 49mm version in black). This bracket is made in considerably thicker wire and flexes apart at the bracket-to-light mounting point to accommodate the wider mounting point on the underside of the Saferide 60.

Using this modified mount along with (in my case) large-ish stainless steel "penny" washers on either side of this Edelux wire bracket with an M6 bolt through the fork crown makes for a rock-solid mount.

Using a decent vice and a bit of force I think it would probably be possible to bend this wire bracket at the existing bend point to achieve a near 90-degree bend
such that now-horizontal arm passes *over* the Weinmann long reach centre pull brakes but *under* the straddle wire
(or indeed under or over any other centre-crossing brake wire)

[Lance Dopestrong]

These centre pull calipers are often handed, front or rear. The fronts usually have a longer drop so you may find that the front caliper has capacity to spare, so swapping them round might cure your problem. This worked last year when I fitted 700C hoops to my 1978 Elswick Hopper. Worth a careful look with the tape measure.

[Brucey]

.... To be honest the Weinmann Brakes sucked even when the bike was fitted with 27" rims, so I'm sure these ones can't be any worse. ....The rims are Mavic MA40, so not especially narrow, or especially wide.

I beg to differ; those rims are narrow in my book (20.5mm IIRC) and with weinmann CPs I spaced the brake blocks out another 5mm each side when using these rims with these brakes. If you don't do this you lose MA in the brakes, big time. An easy way of respacing them is to use V blocks instead. I recommend that you use these with two additional M6 washers fitted to each pad to make them a better fit into the arms. Basically the flatter the straddle wire the more the MA with these brakes, so start the brake out as wide as possible.

Re the reach; Viscounts used to be fitted with their own brand CPs for a long time and these were roughly equivalent to a Weinmann 610 caliper. They also used Weinmanns and Shimano CPs at times too. If you have run out of reach when going to 700Cs I would suggest that you fit a Weinmann 750 to the rear; it will have a longer reach and this should work OK.

Personally I would rather eat worms than ditch a set of working CPs (for which the bike was designed) for crappy alhongas, but hey, each to his own. I'd additionally argue that the CP brakes (with good cables and pads) will work better than the DPs too. And the bolt heads won't go rusty after one winter.

Re the lamp bracket; if you get some strips of aluminium ~1mm x 13mm section you can, using three short strips, make a super lamp bracket to fit to a CP brake. You need three strips; two short ones and one long one. Each strip has a 6mm hole in each, a ~90 degree twist in it lengthwise, and a bend where necessary. The long strip mounts to the centrebolt and the other two mount to the pivot bolts. They can all come forwards to a single mounting bolt that passes through the lamp as well. If you do it in the right way this bracket will never break because it is fully triangulated. I have ridden about 30000 miles using a bracket of this type; I used a heavy lamp and even thinner aluminium strips and it was fine.

hth

cheers

[Rhodrich]

Many thanks for all the ideas and suggestions everyone.

I've now been offered a pair of Tektro R559's dual pivot calipers for £15, so I think I will go with these first. Whilst it may be possible to get the Weinmann centre pulls to work (I checked last night, and they're both model 610), I don't think it's going to be worth the bother. I'm about 2mm out, so V brake pads might work, but it looks like the straddle wires both need replacing on the Weinmanns too, as they're looking decidedly rusty. Given the cost of new straddle wires and v brake blocks, to get the Weinmanns to work, plus the cost of a new lamp bracket, I might as well just go with the Tektros. In my experience, dual pivot calipers work better than centre pulls anyway (though that might just be me).

With regard to the bracket for the Saferide, it looks very much like the type in your picture IanW. I will attempt to mount it once I've got the Tektros, but will keep a close eye on it for fatigue. It's good to know that there are sensibly priced alternative brackets if need be (or that it's easy to make your own).

Now I've just got to hope that the Mavic threadless bottom bracket holds up, as that's what took the bike off the bike last time when it came loose in the bottom bracket shell (well it was that, multiple spoke breakages in the rear wheel, a flat spot in the front wheel from where I hit a pothole badly, and a dead headset that finally persuaded me to retire it). It hardly seems worth the bother getting the bike back on the road, but I've had it for over 20 years, so it has sentimental value.

[MikeF]

IanW Did you manage to prise apart the plastic reflector that clips round the bracket? I know the B&M ones just clip round the bracket, but it looked like the Philips one was glued. Perhaps I didn't try hard enough. That's why I pulled the wires through.

[IanW]

IanW Did you manage to prise apart the plastic reflector that clips round the bracket? I know the B&M ones just clip round the bracket, but it looked like the Philips one was glued. Perhaps I didn't try hard enough. That's why I pulled the wires through.

The reflector and black back plate were not *glued* together
but instead there are 3 plastic pegs / pins that clip inextricably into sockets

So I managed to insert first a craft-knife blade then a small flat screwdriver and managed to lever the two halves apart such that I broke only the 3 pins.
You can just about see 2 of the snapped pins here:

I cut and filed-out the channels in the back plate to accept the thicker Edelux wire bracket and then carefully epoxy-glued the two halves back together around the bracket, re-enclosing the electrical wires and a piece of silver foil to improve the reflector.

[MikeF]

Thanks Ian. It appears you had to break something then to prise it apart.
How I mounted mine

without a reflector.
I ride along a route which gives it (and me) severe vibration and it's been fine so far.

[Rhodrich]

Fitted the Tektro R559's last night, and mounted up the Saferide using it's normal bracket.

Brakes - massive improvement over the Weinmanns (probably due to the narrowness of my rims, and hence the Low MA due to the straddle wire angle)

Light - fits perfectly (with a thick washer between the fork crown and the bracket, to keep the bracket away from the lower headset, plus a small trim of the slot that the wire comes out of on the reflector to clear the headset)

Two birds killed with one stone, and they look good too.

The next challenge is to fit the Lumiring rear light. I used to have this fitted to the rack on my old bike, but I just use a Carradice on this one, with no rear rack. There's a possibility I'll be able to mount it using P clips to the Carradice Bagman, but it's not looking promising. Might have to get a seatstay mounted dynamo rear lamp instead, but the only one I can find is the B&M Secula Line Tec - not sure if it's any good though: I'm a bit worried about the fixing, as I don't want the light ever getting in the way of my back wheel.