Well, I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. The cable clamp to my front brake caliper stripped out as I was tightening it. They are Tektro (R556 aka Silver) long reach brakes and I’ve been using them for about three and a half maybe 4 years now. I also had a pair of these on the steamroller for a few months when they first came out but decided that they didn’t really modulate well enough for the kind of riding I was doing on it. Anyway, they’ve been pretty good so far and they provide excellent clearance. Braking is somewhat better since switching to salmon brake pads a few months ago. Tonight I was replacing the cables to switch to a pair of Soma Noah’s Arc bars. I’ve been riding a pair of 48cm Nitto noodle’s and liked them as much as any drop bar I’ve used, but without a loner steer tube protruding to get them up higher or a radically tall stem or stem extender it will be tough to get really comfy on them. So I could get some moustache bars, or a new fork, but I had the bars so I figured I will just use them and get a clamp on nitto rack for a VO Bar Bag. Now I will either get some replacement parts from tektro and repair them, or I will use a new centerpull brake. I have a pair that I am going to try first, although they have nutted mounting hardware. I’m hoping I can replace the hardware with stuff from the new brakes, because I imagine by doing that and replacing the old crappy pads with some from koolstop with a softer compound will make them work pretty decent and I will be able to get a rack from VO that mounts to it. It looks good and will hopefully work well for the time being. I will try to put in some longer miles to see if they are still comfortable.