I’ve purchased some newer brake calipers for an old frame and the bolts aren’t long enough to go through the frame.

They also come with a sleeve type bolt not regular bolt, this is wider that the hole.

Has anyone tried drilling out a hole to widen it, or am i asking for trouble?

you can do it (drill out the back side), whether or not it will cause issues depends on the frame and how much material is there and I’m not going to recommend you do.

You can still get modern brakes (Tektro do some good ones) that use the ‘through bolt’ fitting for old frames rather than the recessed nuts, that’s what I use on old frames not drilled for recessed fitting.

cheers, I’ll take a look at tektro.

example of one with nut fitting:

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tektro-tektro-r359-caliper-brake-set-47-57-mm-drop-nut-fitting-silver-prod29405/

Cheers again. 🙂

Front is easy. Back is a pain and might cause the brake bridge to fail.

hard to say without seeing the frame

I tend to be unworried about drilling steel frames but that is a pretty critical area with not much metal left to take away.

Advice above is correct i would not do it unless i had no other options and even then would need to see how metal was left.

You can convert them to a nutted version with this

Good spot Rorschach, available at purveryors of all things odd SJS cycles too!

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/jtek-tektro-shimano-pattern-70-mm-dual-pivot-brake-bolt-cr-mo-for-nut-conversion-prod24266/

I am indeed, an enormous nerd.

ow that’s interesting and cheaper obviously,.. my brakes are Miche Freni?

assume these bolts are pretty much standard diameter?

going to see if i can extract the old bolt first

cheers Rorschach

bolt successfully extracted, eye nearly extracted by the spring! 😯