Velo Orange Gran Cru Zeste Brakes

Nearly anybody reading this blog is familiar with Velo Orange.  It's a really impressive growth example for a small business.    After a couple years of retirement from another business, Chris decided to pursue his other passion, cycling.  His purpose was to find and make available many products which had disappeared or were hard for cyclists to get.  He started by importing some brass bells.   Now, only a few years later, we are not far from a totally branded bike.  You can buy everything you need to build a bike with his brand except derailers and cogs.  It's been a really impressive growth story considering he started the company with an idea and $2000.  

I wanted his Gand Cru Zeste cantilever brakeset.  He ships them in an impressive box

which leaves one a little disappointed to see baggies full of nuts, wires and stuff,

But the goods are all there.

 I wanted the Gran Cru Zeste calipers for their additional length and the power it should bring,  

They measure more than 3 inches from cable anchor to pivot,

while the Tektros I have been using are nearly an inch shorter.  That extra length should create a lot more power which I have found necessary when traveling with a full load.

                           

Removing the old calipers and installing the new was a typical installation, I won't bore you with it.  There are instructions on the website and even color coded springs so you won't fumble with them.  These calipers sit at about a 25-30 degree angle to the vertical which is good for touring and off road applications because there is less lateral exposure.  Now with my intuitive perception, I was concerned that would reduce the stopping power compared to levers resting at a 90 degree angle.  I gave the problem over to my computer scientist/mathematician son who turned the idea inside out with a couple of geometric formulas.  He assured me the main thing affecting the breaking power would be the length of the lever itself, not the angle from which force was applied.
 I read some Emily Dickinson and slept better.

I don't know why, but I assumed that these would require less attention to the toe-in angle since they use regular roadie sized pads.  I was wrong, they can be quite musical until you make the usual toe-in adjustment.  The road sized pads do create a convenience when changing wheels or tires.  

They are not impeded by the fork or seat stays and flop wide open without a problem.

They have a couple of nice adjustment features; where the arrow points is a nice little allen screw for fine tuning the return spring tension, and way-over-the-top-cool is the barrel adjuster circled above.  Adding the barrel adjuster to the straddle wire is nice,  I have adjusters at the brake lever, inline at the headset/seat stay anchors, and at the caliper itself.  That should make adjustment easy; I have two wheelsets with different rim sizes I use on this bike. 

I am not the most experienced person with canti's, but these feel like a 500% improvement over the Tektro Oryx calipers I was using.  The movement is light, modulation clean and they are powerful at the fingertips with little effort.  They seem, at least at first run, to be a vast improvement and good investment.