monoplanar monologue (or single pivot thoughts…)

A warning in deference to my non-cycling friends…….. look away now if you don’t want to know ;o)

Something I read this morning amused me and ignited a few memories… I keep a weather eye on fleabay for vintage components always with a mind on future projects. This morning it was Campagnolo brake calipers… (yawn….) or to be more specific a set of rather lovely old Super Record cals in top condition. Lovely. The bit that made me laugh though was the seller’s description where he said “…these brakes work and look amazing. They function super smooth and provide the most reliable brake assistance money can get you.” Hmm, I agree with the first part, here’s a pic, and they are rather lovely if you like vintage stuff, rare in this condition too:

I did smile though at the second part. I have memories from early racing days of descending with a set of these brakes… like all single-pivots of the era, relative to modern dual pivot designs, they had the stiffness of a banana skin resulting in many white knuckle experiences when I overcooked things on technical descents… One of my buddies at the time was vociferous in his defence of the poor braking on his Campag equipped bike, maintaining that the brakes were not actually for stopping you, rather they were for slowing down only… bit of a laugh really (endless mickey taking…), I’m not sure what pad compound he had but his bike was worse than mine for stopping power, I have a brown-trouser memory of riding it down a 20% gradient (complete with nasty off-camber bend at the bottom) and still accelerating with the brakes hard on…. Just as an aside I reckon the best stoppers of this style were Suntour’s Superbe Pro calipers, back when Suntour made a top end group set. I had a 20yr old set recently on my training bike and all things considered they were pretty good.

While I’m on the topic This was also the era when Campagnolo were moving very much into the form over function mission, there was the rather silly (IMO) but quite nice looking Cobalto version of the Record brake with it’s little sapphire on set into the pivot bolt (which change hands for silly money these days), and then the Delta brake which looked ace and actually worked quite well if you had the patience to set the thing up properly… it was a bit of a boat anchor in the weight department though. Wish I’d never sold mine, they’re worth a fair old wedge on the collector market. The best brakes though of the pre-dual pivot era in my opinion were Campag’s monoplanar designs. I had a set of these too, and I still have a set on my Merckx. They actually work really well, nice and stiff, plenty of modulation and they look fantastic, very elegant. Still a bit heavy but this was back when bike frames were steel or… steel and few extra grams really made bugger all difference. Here’s a pic of one of mine:

I like modern dual pivots, they ‘re amazingly powerful and very light, but they’re very boring to look at.

Oh cr@p, I can’t believe I wrote all that about bloody brake calipers. I’m not a bike historian though sadly it appears I am, despite my own self-denial, something of a geek…… ah well.