Brake Talk

Image courtesy of Paul Components

I was riding my King Fabrications "Honeman Flyer" the other day when I was struck by how much better my brakes were working compared to when I first put the bike together. Back at that time, I was pretty displeased with how they were working, or better said, not working! 

However; post-Mid-South, they started working really well, and now I would be hard-pressed to change them out for any reason. I had one stop the other day on that bike where I grabbed a bit too much front brake and I lifted the rear wheel off the ground. That's enough braking power for me! Especially when I think about using brakes on gravel. 

This brought me to a remembrance of conversations I had with Ben Witt of Heath Creek Cycles and also some of my research into flat mount calipers at that time. I thought that, perhaps, some of you might benefit from my thoughts on brakes and Ben's suggestions as well.

Growtac Equal Brakes. (Image courtesy of Velo Orange)

My comments and thoughts here are based upon my need for a mechanically operated flat mount caliper only. I may compare to a fully hydraulic system, but this is centered around cable operated brakes for the most part.

"Bougie" Brakes:

I did look at some expensive options for this custom bike because.....it was a custom built frame? I guess that I thought maybe a "high end" brake was fitting in this case. You know, kind of like wearing a silk tie with a tuxedo. You just don't do it any other way. 

But the prices for those calipers was, and still is, eye-watering. Wow! The Paul brakes would have been over one third the price of the frame alone. That didn't make sense to me. The Growtac Equal brakes were another high end offering that also gets rave reviews, but again, those were still pretty expensive. A little over one hundred dollars less than the Paul brakes, but yeah.... Why? 

You might say that "they work almost as well as hydraulic brakes and far better than other mechanical options.", but a fully hydraulic system, (With no shifting needs. This was for a single speed bike) like the TRP Hylex, which comes with levers and hoses, costs under $400.00 for a pair. So, right in line with Growtacs , which do not include levers, and less than Paul's which are caliper only. 

Shimano RS305 mechanical flat mount calipers. (Image from AliExpress)

Secret Weapon?:

Ben informed me of a mechanical flat mount caliper that I was unaware of previous to his telling me about them. The Shimano RS305 calipers, which Ben spoke pretty highly of, are dirt cheap. I've seen these for under sixty bucks for a pair! 

They come with resin pads with Ice Tech fins. Ben says they work very well. His word is good enough for me to say that I probably would have liked them on my new bike as well. That said, I wasn't 100% on-board with putting a cheap Shimano caliper on my custom bike. Yeah, probably a little bit of snobbery going on there, but mostly it was the look of that brake that turned me off. Too plain for this wild looking build!

I ended up with TRP Spyre calipers

So, I ended up with TRP Spyre calipers in the end. I already had them on hand, so that was a big reason why I went that direction with the brakes. As I said, they were not very impressive at first. So how is it that they are so good now? I think it all has to do with two things: Set up and bedding in of the pads with the rotors. 

Most of the issues with mechanically activated calipers, in my experience as a mechanic and personally, have been with how the brake caliper was set up to begin with. It is ultra-important to get this correct. The piston, or pistons, have to be set up so that the pads don't deflect the rotor when the brake is applied. Get that right and you are more than halfway there. 

Secondly, it is now my belief that getting your pads and rotors bedded in really well will bring your brakes to life. In my case, with the Honeman Flyer, I believe it was the abrasive red dirt of Oklahoma that helped get the pads and rotors happy with each other. That and the long descents which saw me dragging the brakes a bit more than I would in Iowa. 

Whatever the case may have been, it took a good bedding in to bring out the best in these brakes, and now I wouldn't change them out for anything else. And if I had to buy the Spyres? You can get a pair right now on eBay for under a hundred bucks and they are around $150.00 or slightly less for a pair at many online retailers.

Brown Season: Honeman Flyer Maiden Gravel Voyage

Escape Route: North Side alleys

 After a couple of test rides and a commute back and forth to work, the Honeman Flyer had gained enough of my trust to go for a brief ride out in the country. The goal was simple: Go to the Big Rock and back home again. 

I chose this route because that is where I rode my Black Mountain Cycles MCD on its maiden gravel voyage in 2018. It is also where I first rode on gravel with my Twin Six Standard Rando v2 in 2020. So, keeping the them alive with another test ride two years later to the Big Rock just seemed appropriate. 

It was a nice day, a little hazy with high clouds creeping in which heralded a rain event we experienced Friday. It was warm, about 57°F and hardly any wind, but what there was seemed to be out of the Southeast. I wore 3/4's pants, a bib short for a liner, a base layer, and my long sleeved wool jersey with the Twin Six wind vest. I stuck some plastic shopping bags on my feet and wore my Shimano gravel shoes. Wool socks.....but of course!

Hitting first gravel here. This was about as Sunny as it ever was during the ride.

That's Big Rock Road in the distance.

I wound my way through town casually. The road out to Moline Road wasn't too busy, which was nice. People drive 55 mph on that section which is signed at 45mph, so it can get a little hairy if the traffic is bad. There are no shoulders to speak of either. That lasts about a mile, but it really sucks to ride that stretch. 

I hit first gravel and thought to myself, "Well, it rides like a bike!" Which is a good thing. The Honeman design isn't all that far off from modern day gravel machines, so things like the front end geometry and the bottom bracket drop are not all that weird at all. In fact, a lot of gravel bikes are where this geometry is at. The outlier here is the rear of the bike which features a very different set of numbers. It all starts with that slack, 70° seat tube, which in reality measured out for me at a half a degree slacker than that! 

It's a keeper!

I'll likely have a deeper dive into the historical aspects of this idea, but as for now, I'll just say that the entire design seems to be a very relevant one to gravel riding. As I said, the front end is, for all intents and purposes, "standard gravel geometry fare". The rear is the old married back to what was old, and the entire package just really shines for me on gravel. I'll also say that the fact that the bike is a steel bike makes this even hit home more precisely. 

The slack seat tube angle "works" that seat post more, and perhaps the angles of the rear triangle help here as well. All I can say is that this is a very, very smooth riding bike. The thin gauge steel tubing helps a lot too, but whenever a builder chooses thin gauged steel, you have to start riding more calmly and smoothly. This would not be the bike for a person that pedaled in squares, but not because of the geometry, but because of the frame tubing. 

I had a Tomassini road bike built out of Columbus SL tubing and you HAD to ride that bike with excellent form or it would hate you. This bike is not that bad, but I can tell it rewards a smoother, more efficient pedaler. I'm fine with that. If you wrassle your bike, you should err on the side of heavier gauge steel, in my opinion. 

The rural beer drinkers must have been kickin' it old school recently.

That little grouping of trees off to the left here on Big Rock Road held some new arrivals from the South.

As I rode along Big Rock Road I was ruminating on how I had not yet seen, nor heard, any Robins yet this year. And then it dawned on me that the Red Winged Blackbirds should also be back by now. But I had seen no signs of either. I looked across a field and then a small group of trees was coming up on my left. I saw movement, I heard sounds. Both Red Winged Blackbirds and Robins in the same trees! 

Check and check! 

Well, I suppose the Robins will be heard outside the house any morning now then. Up until now though, they haven't been heard singing their random, warbly song. 

What?! "Normal" gravel conditions? Weird.....

It is still insanely dry and dusty out in the country. At least the roads aren't ditch-to-ditch crushed rock three inches deep. I don't know what sort of rain we got, but we're going to need a whole lot more of that before we are out of the woods with regard to the drought here. 

As for the Honeman Flyer, I have to await the incoming through axle (should be today) and then all will be done with it and then it will be on to more riding. Until then.....

Introducing "The Honeman Flyer"

The Honeman Flyer by King Fabrication. (Image courtesy of Li King)

  Okay, I kind of kept this under wraps until I was sure that it was going to be a reality. Now that it is, I can tell you that I own this frame and fork and it is currently on its way to me now. 

If you've been around the blog from late last year you already have a clue as to what this is, but for those that may not know, this is a single speed specific bike based upon a 1930's track bike design by a Mr. Brennan and was a design I came across from a Facebook post. 

That post showed an advertisement from a page from a Popular Mechanics issue from the 1940's. Willie Honeman's frame building business was advertising his talents in that magazine and in the ad he showed his 1930's track bike which he won a championship on. The ad was very detailed so frame measurements and angles and such were all there. 

This prompted me to consider if track bikes, which were ridden by their owners at times over the roads to track events or for training, was a precursor to modern day gravel geometry. I wondered if such a beast, modernized, would actually work today. 

Image courtesy of Erik Mathy

Briefly, the design borrows from the geometry of the Honeman/Brennan bike right down to the super-slack seat tube, but extended to fit my 6'1" frame. (The original was long, a top tube that would work for me, but had a short seat tube) The numbers will be double-checked when it arrives and I will divulge what we have here at that point. 

The modern bits are flat mount brakes, a carbon Salsa Waxwing fork, and Paragon Machine Works sliding drop outs for through axles. The head tube is a straight 44mm one so I will be using a modern, threadless head set. But the bottom bracket is still a standard, threaded BSA version, just like the old Honeman had.

The frame features King Fab's signature double brake bridge and through-to-bare metal logo on the downtube and top tube. That rectangular patch on the non-drive chainstay is where the serial number is stamped into the frame. The paint I left up to Li to choose other than that I told him that I liked King Fab's crackle-paint jobs and that my favorite colors were purple, green, and that I liked pink. What you see here is what Li decided on for me. I quite like it.

The parts are almost all figured out for this rig and I do have to get to building it right quick as this is going to Mid-South with me. 

Yes, I also hadn't said anything about that, but it is all part of "The Plan" and no- I was not 100% in charge of "The Plan".  This will all be explained in due time. Stay tuned....