My commuter came with lx canti brakes with stud pads they were rubbish and a PITA to set up so got some of these mini Vs instead

much easier to setup don’t need to adjust for pad wear very often and when you do it’s a doddle but they are getting a bit tired and rattly now. Was wondering about replacing with these

Bolt on pads so should be fairly easy to setup (?) but how do they compare power wise and do you have to adjust for pad wear very often?

Seem to recall if the canti arms are close to vertical (a la V brakes) pad wear doesn’t affect alignment too much, if the arms are further out at a bigger angle from vertical (like these cantis) a little pad wear can throw alignment out. But it’s a long time since I’ve used cantis regularly so I could be talking bollocks.

I’ve wondered about new canti’s for a while on my cx bike as mine are pants. I’m tempted by mini V’s as I know how to set them up well, I never got the hang of canti’s and was glad to see the back of them in mountain biking!

I’m running avid shorty 4’s atm, easy enough to set up, little adjustment needed. power acceptable (but not as good as my tiagra double pivots?).

I’d stick with V’s, but only because I don’t like cantis.

I stopped using my Tektro 720’s after a few ‘oh shit these aren’t slowing me down’ moments on the road.

I replaced with the Tektro mini’v s above, and hey presto, braking that works.

I thought cantis were supposed to be more powerful than mini Vs

I thought cantis were supposed to be more powerful than mini Vs

Nah, the CX riders use cantis to slow themselves down a bit, not to stop like you might, say, on a commute!!!

I’d never go back to cantis. Certainly not on the front after a lot of judder issues. Refresh the ones you’ve got with a new set of pads.

My mini vees were more powerful than cantis but clogged up with mud when racing.

You can run vee brake pads in them to improve braking and using cartirdge pads makes the repeated setup a bit easier.

If you aren’t going to be riding through loads of claggy mud then mini vees. My cantis are ok on the road and offroad and fine for racing. No where near as good as other options though. Discs on the next one!

ah right fair enough, I knew proper Vs were stronger but wasn’t sure about minis, thought I’d read somewhere about cantis being more powerful. Will get mini Vs again then.

I just put a set of CR720 canti on my Dolan CX commuter and I am very happy with them. Had a set of vintage Suntour cantis before (including scary self-energising rear!), but these are very easy to set-up and work great. I have no problems stopping.

I would rate these as a product that “just works” and they look better on the bike than I expected.

Were very good value on Ribble website with discount applied. Make sure you get them with the cartridge pads as some places sell them with regular pads (which I believe should be labelled CR520?)

BTW.. it looks like the ones in your pic do not have the cartridge pads. Mine from Ribble had them fitted.

Do mini-Vs work fine with road STI’s then?

Mini vs work great with road sti’s.