Trying to upgrade my older bike from a cantilever to vbrakes. Bought a set of Shimano ST M739 3x8 XT Deore shift levers and was wondering if they work with Shimano V brakes. I know the pull length is different with vbrakes. Also, are vbrakes all the same? Meaning, should I buy a vintage m739 vbrakes or get something newer??
But it feels really crummy, and your set up window for remotely functional is super narrow.
Problem Solvers used to offer the Travel Agent, a pulley that changed the leverage ratio, but they seem to have gone the way of the Dodo. Quick web search didn't turn up a viable alternative, but poking around, you should be able to scare a few up.
They were a tad fiddly, but once set up, worked like a charm, and felt great.
I'm looking at a set on eBay, and the pivot to anchor distance looks like V brake spec to me.
I'm reaching way back to my bike shop days here, but I believe 8 speed and the V brakes came out around 95 or so in XT and XTR, and were scarce for a little while. My Zaskar LE frameset came from a bike one of our companion stores ordered and stripped to build an XTR bike for a customer, and I remember building bikes for our more hardcore customers with XT Vbrakes around that year.
XT 739 is V-brake compatible, the previous 737 model was canti brake.
Just don't buy anything described as a mini v-brake. they are some weird bastard child that is halfway between V and canti leverage, anything else should be fine.
Although the XT 739 V-brakes are notorious for loose pivots. So maybe avoid those unless they are new, or you can find the shim/rebuild kit for them.
Thank you all for you input! I really appreciate it and am learning quite a lot thru forums like these and other resources.
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