Early Club Tour rims

[PH]

I was only aware of one model of Tektro brake levers that were long pull for drop bars. 

I think we're going down an unnecessary rabbit hole here, there's at least three brands of drop bar long pull levers, but that's irrelevant as the OP has straight bars and there's countless short pull levers for those.  Anything pre V brakes for a start, then when fast hybrids became fashionable all the manufacturers reintroduced levers to work with caliper brakes, SJS list at least half a dozen.

[AdrianStone]

I do indeed have the wrong brake/shifters on flat bars, they are Shimano ST-EF35-8 and ST-ET35L,

I’m not surprised that braking performance was poor with V brake specific levers.  I would make it a priority to fit full size V brake callipers both front and rear before I rode that bike much further.

Decent V brakes aren’t expensive and there’s a good supply on the secondhand market. The cheapest options generally use the frame mounting boss as a pivot bearing. Paying a little more will get you internal pivot bearing bushes and better brake shoes with replaceable pad option.

Thank you - that was what I was trying to do, but on checking the brake bosses on the forks, they are @67mm centre to centre, from my reading around I think any V-brake needs something closer to 80mm apart, I assume they would fit after a fashion, but the arms not be parallel to the forks?

I'm going to have to rethink everything, it might just be easier to remove the combined brake/shifters and fit separate brake levers and shifters, again nothing I know about apart other than it's a triple front chain ring and 8 gears at the back.

Again, thank you all for the advice, it does seem to be a mine field and I seem to have bought a 'pig in a poke'

[martinf]

Thank you - that was what I was trying to do, but on checking the brake bosses on the forks, they are @67mm centre to centre, from my reading around I think any V-brake needs something closer to 80mm apart, I assume they would fit after a fashion, but the arms not be parallel to the forks?

With the brake pads and holders I use there is quite a lot of scope for adjustment by changing the order of the concave washers on the pad holder. See attached image file.

I generally use standard brake pads, they have the same stack of washers. But that image shows "thinline" pads that might work better with relatively narrow forks. Link to Thinline pads here :

https://www.koolstop.eu/rim-brake-pads/cantilever-v-brake/thinline-threaded/t2-thinline-salmon-ks-tltsa-re-335/