Help me upgrade my Surly Crosscheck

I love my Crosscheck. We’ve had many good tours together. It’s comfortable, a good fit, rugged. It’s a bit heavy but with loaded panniers, it’s not an issue.

To get past the limitations of cantilever brakes, I’ve fitted some retro Magura HS66 hydraulic rim brakes for drop bars, which although working superbly, mean that I’m limited to downtube gear shifters, and the novelty of them has worn off. After recently riding my road bike more, I’ve decided I’d like STI shifters on my Crosscheck.

But how can I overcome the braking issue. Going back to cable cantilevers is a big no as I never found them to offer enough braking for a fully laden bike. Could I fit a new front fork with disk mounts without destroying the geometry of the bike, or are there now other hydraulic rim brake alternatives?

I’m led to believe the HS66 are quite desirable so I’m hoping that selling them will at least fund some of the changes I want to make.

Cheers,

R

I’ve got a drop bar cross-type bike with cable discs and a bar end shifter, and a road bike with canti’s and braze-ons for DT shifters but using a bar end shifter.

So bar end shifters is one option, an improvement over DT shifting, but you’re still moving your hand to shift. If you’re racing or riding tech terrain, it’s not ideal, but road riding, touring, commuting is fine. I found them quite handy for city centre commutes with loads of traffic lights. You can check if you changed down to a gear to get quickly away from the lights by the lever position, rather than peering down between your legs at the cassette, which you inevitably do as the lights change and you get honked by impatient drivers behind.

Or new fork with disc mount, shimano brifters, BB7 road on the front, BR CX50 canti on the back.

Or new fork, and get a disc mount brazed on the back, then whatever brifter combo you fancy, hydro or cable disc. But think ahead about what mount standard you want if you’re going that way.

Have you tried mini V-Brakes (good ones) with decent pads (e.g. Swissstop BXP/blue).

I haven’t ridden any of my bikes fully laden, but I understand that a lot of people swear by mini-V brakes as having power in spades, much easier to live with than cantilevers, less costly and complicated than discs, etc.

The mini-Vs I have fitted to my winter commuter are shockingly powerful compared to the (very nice) cantis I have fitted to my CX bike. These are TRP CX 8.4s, the slightly shorter arms give more pad/rim clearance than the longer CX9s, but I believe with modern shimano STIs with the SLR cable pull, the CX9s should be fine for everything except extreme mud, and would offer slightly more power.

Agree with the above. Had the CX9s on my Cross Check for a few years now, awesome brakes, easily as good as mechanical disks. Still using downward shifters so not sure how well they perform with brifters? I’d probably go bar end shifters anyway if I do any more tinkering, been impressed with them on another bike. Cross check seems to get a different incarnation every couple of years on average!

I’ve got cx50’s on my commuter, with swiss stop blue (I think!) pads in. Tried MiniV’s but they’re tricky to fit round mudguards.

The CX50’s are very good unladen or just with a pannier, but if I’m pulling 40-odd kgs of wagon and 2 little boys, they’re noticeably less comfortably strong and sure than the BB7s on the cross-type bike. Some of that’s down to the forks though – there’s a fair bit of flutter from the skinny 531ST fork blades, whereas the Peregrine was built to feel steady when laden.

Bar end shifters? V brakes? I’d expect there are disc compatible forks that will work fine too.

TBH cantis should work fine – I’ve toured the Pyrenees on them with 4 panniers.

As above really, braze on disc mounts at your local friendly framebuilder or some nice cantis. I never really liked CX9s, but Avid Shorty Ultimate were always the ones to have back when CX was all cantis.

Tried MiniV’s but they’re tricky to fit round mudguards.

CX9s would be ‘taller’ than CX8.4s and I’ve fitted CX8.4s over 45mm mudguards on top of 32mm tyres, maybe just needs a bit of fiddling or longer brackets?

Avid Shorty Ultimate were always the ones to have back when CX was all cantis.

Still great brakes, but if you don’t need the mud clearance I’d go mini-V, I find keeping on top of cable adjustments on the Shorty Ultimates a bit annoying, they seem to chew cables. Perhaps I’ve just been adjusting them too much trying to find the sweetspot between power, but still having the cable hanger high enough to avoid mud clogging.

How about just getting some shimano sti that use hydro brakes? You would only need the levers, that takes care of the gears, then convert the maguras to work with oil, rather than the original brake fluid.
Not exactly easy, but it would probably be unique.
Personally, id probably go with mini V’s, or have the frame and fork converted to disc.

Some interesting thoughts, thank you!

Perhaps the mini-v brakes are worth trying but I would need then to go around mudguards. In an ideal world, I would prefer to stay with rim brakes because I think a lot of heat is generated by a fully loaded tourer under braking over a long descent, so I worry disks would overheat.

Cynic-al, glad to hear your canti’s worked well for touring but mine were a hair-raising experience to say the least… I have tried Shimano and froglegg brakes with various pads, neither of which gave me much confidence with loaded panniers.

I might just buy these Surly Straggler forks to fit a mechanical front disk, tolerate a rear cantilever brake, and see how it goes. Sounds like they have the same geometry as the Crosscheck forks.

I think (you best check though) that you should be able to fit a Surly Straggler fork. And that has disc mounts

https://surlybikes.com/parts/straggler_fork

Was going to suggest a Straggler or Disc Trucker fork, and then a road BB7 up front. Seems the ideal solution to f you don’t want to replace the whole frameset with either a Straggler or Trucker (I replaced mine with the Trucker).

IME, mini Vs are misery to live with: aside from the mudguard issue, they won’t allow a large tyre through when removing the wheel, meaning undoing the cable every time. I tried them for a while on my Cross Check (in an attempt to find non-squealy brakes) and never again.

Thought about putting a straggler fork on mine but by the time I factored in fork cost, new discs etc it didn’t seem worth it moneywise, would work fine though. Had no problem with 35mm tyres, mudguards and stopping power on the CX9s – even in the wet!

I run dura ace bar end shifters on mine, mainly as I couldn’t afford sti when I built it up from spares.

I keep looking at fitting stis but the bar end shifters are pretty good. If I were racing or riding in a group it would be different, but for the most part they are pretty good. My main issue is the dia compe v brake levers I have aren’t very comfy on the hoods.

But to go STI I need to spend lots, buy new brakes and probably move from 9 to at least 10 speed.

I might swap it back to flat bars again for a bit, just because I can. I do love that bike.

You can install disc on non-disc frame:

https://krzywekolo.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/a2z-dm-uni/comment-page-1/

Please excuse my barbaric language, but pictures should be descriptive enough.

Not using this set up anymore but only because of that:

Close encounter with back of the car…

Cheers!
I.

HS66 are mineral oil just like Shimano levers. But I’ve no idea what happens if you try and use STI hydro levers with HS66 – guess it depends on the volume of fluid in the pistons and what the master cylinder does i.e. is the “leverage” ratio anywhere near the same and do the pads pump out. Does the google not throw up someone who has tried this? I’ve probably got a Shimano mtb lever and some Magura MTB rim brakes somewhere. Guess I could try it out….

Or could you mount a thumb shifter to the Magura lever like Gevenalle do?
https://www.gevenalle.com/shifters/

I’ve got mini-V’s on my SSCX, takes 44mm tyres or mudguards (haven’t tried both, I think the guards were for <40mm).

They work well enough that I’ve not really thought about them. On balance I decided they were actually a good thing as V-brakes probably better tolerate being dragged to scrub off speed when riding it fixed. Based on my commuting I’d probably say wet-touring-acceptable braking, pick two.

Leftfield suggestion, I wonder what the hydraulic ratio would be like between the HS66 caliper and some shimano STI’s? Or are the HS66 a closed system?

Paul Brakes are ace whatever you get would work like a charm on a Cross Check, managed to comfortably haul up my 15 stone with commuting stuff!

Paul also do a mount that lets you fit either a bar end shifter as a thumbie on the tops or a SRAM shifter on the tops but under the bar both work really quite nicely although I’m pretty much happy with bar end shifters right now.

Hs66 is a closed system. Maybe they would pump the pads out. Also the hs66 hose was pretty basic nylon pipe so maybe the pressure is lower.

If you’re happy with the brakes, I’d be more inclined to look at a different ways to operate the Gears? Bar-end mounted levers, or even Stem mounted? Both are quite easy to do and less annoying than bending down to reach a Downtube shifter…

But could you adapt the brake levers with something like a Gevenalle type shifter?
I’ve now got a 1x Gevenalle setup (Microshift lever mounted on TRP Hylex) on my Gravel bike (and I bloody love em) after spending quite a bit of time on My DIY bodged vesion, and I’ve got another DIY friction version on my commuter…

I’d go for bar-end shifters together with long pull brake levers and V brakes. Bar-end shifters are really under-rated. You get a really positive feel and I think I prefer them to my Campag ergo shifters. You still get to keep your hands on the bars too albeit they have to be on the drops.