Ok people I need some knowledge around here. I'm working on fixing up my wife's bike. It's a wonderful classic Peugeot women's city bike. Mid 70s steel frame. I've run into the issue of the brakes. They lack for stopping power immensely. I swapped the cables and pads to no avail.
The brake mechanism themselves are simply north of 40 years old and the pivot as well as the bolt are losing integrity. Both front and back refuse to remain centered and the back in particular requires a very firm pull. I don't believe them to be so degraded as to be dangerous but certainly have seen better days. So while
While I'm planning to disassemble, clean and lube them, I really don't have my hopes up for great improvement. I will likely replace them both. Here's the rub (pun intended): the rear brake cable is routed through the center of the crossbar, which is a step through style with two parallel bars with two cable stops at each end for the inner cable to run through without the outer cable. It then follows down the seat stay and loops back upwards, entering the barrel and clamp from below as opposed to the more standard top down. This would be incompatible with most modern caliper brakes that I am familiar with as they typically have the barrel and release mech above the clamp.
Any ideas of where I could look to find a compatible set? Do I need to be searching for a specialty maker or a NOS route or is there a way to modify a modern (presumably superior) caliper. There is a very brief passage on Sheldon Brown's website about potentially modifying one but it mostly requires specialized tools and creating a new decidedly not standard part. The rear caliper is mounted on the seat stay bridge, so I wouldn't be able to switch to a direct pull mounted low on the seat stays.
Long story short... Help lol. Thanks again as always and sorry for the long post. I will try to upload a pic for clarification but I've been getting errors as it's too large.
