Front brakes and levers

[brawlo]

Hey guys, I'm going to take my track bike on the road. After an inspired day where a fellow club member came on the usual Sat morning bunchy and kept up, I've decided to take the plunge and get my track bike road worthy. Now the side story to this is that I live in rural NSW with a good flat section of pretty good road out the front. I'm keen to take my track bike out on the road for some training rather than having to do the pack the bike & kit up and journey into town every time i want to train on it.

The bike is a newer carbon job and I have a second frame thanks to a generous seller who revised the frame design and so gave me a new one. So this bike will be doing full time duty on road and trainer. I nabbed a newish 3T fork from the LBS for a princely sum of $50. It was on a display bike but has never even seen the outdoors. So I'm after a front brake caliper and some brake hoods for a drop bar setup. I've come across some references to avoiding dud calipers and levers but with no reference to what ones are actually duds???

So I've been looking at cheaper calipers from Diacompe, Shimano and SRAM. Are there any of these that I should stay away from? Also looking at hoods from Diacompe, Tektro and Cane Creek. Going via Europe, I can put together a brand new setup for under $100. Cruising around ebay, second hand is not looking that much cheaper for something that's not looking old and trashed.

[Mulger bill]

No experience with DiaCompe but the rest are all fine, Tektro callipers are actually worthy of consideration these days.

[rkelsen]

I've found Dia-Compe calipers to be pretty good and reasonably priced.

You won't go too far wrong looking at any of the brands you mentioned.

[brawlo]

Thanks guys.

[BRLVR.v2]

Tektro hoods for drop bars are ace, match them to a tiagra/105 caliper. Can't go wrong

[Mugglechops]

I use Cane Creek levers and Tektro dual pivot brake on my fixie. With a Cane Creek dummy brake hood on the left.

[ldrcycles]

I've got RL340 levers on 2 bikes, very comfortable shape and work very well. Cheap too.

[gururug]

Big fan of force / 105andup calipers unless it's a shop bike.

[PeteV]

Keep a look out in the for sale section of the forums, I picked up a new set of 105 calipers for $35 a year or so ago. There was a set of new Veloce calipers recently the seller was askin $40 for.

[Tbird]

I have a Tektro no name short lever and Tiagra brake up front on my track bike works perfectly