Brake adjustment?

[sabian92]

Evening all,

I've come to the stage now where I need to adjust my brakes. I was going to have a go at truing my rear wheel but I noticed on the rear, one brake pad was basically on the rim and the other one was a good inch and a half away. I know literally nothing about brakes apart from they stop me, so I'm a bit stuck!

I believe they're caliper brakes but I couldn't tell the difference if you pointed it out and labelled it to be honest

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[gwhite]

First thing before touching the brakes is to determine that the wheel is sitting correctly in the dropouts i.e centrally between the chain stays (insert your thumb between the rim and stays to check).
Calliper brakes are usually found on road bikes while canti's and V brakes will be found on Hybrids and heavier touring/mountain bikes. Identify your type of brakes by looking at adverts for bikes showing the specs. Adjusting these would depend on the type fitted.

 

[sabian92]

I've got a road bike so they're more than likely calliper brakes.

The wheel is sitting correctly as far as I can see, there's no play in it and I've ridden it nearly 300 miles so I'd have noticed, surely?

 

[tyred]

For caliper brakes in simple terms, you need to tighten the cable. Usually, there is a knurled adjuster which can be used to take up the small amounts of slack in the cable to compensate for normal wear on the pads without having to actually release and re-tension the cable. It will probably be fitted with a lock nut on which will have to be undone first and then tightened up again when finished. See the attached photo. I have put a red circle around the adjuster. Unscrew the small lock nut and screw the knurled adjuster out of the holder to lengthen the outer cable and effectively shorten the inner cable. That picture shows one type where where the adjuster is on the brake caliper. In some cases, you may find it on the brake lever (although the only example of a road bike with that I can think of are old French bikes).

While doing this, clean the rims with some WD40 on a clean rag (counter-intuitive but it works), clean the brake pad surface, ensure they are aligned properly with the rim's braking surface, clean the pad surface and ensure there is no embedded grit (which will damage rims) and above all else, make sure they are not excessively worn (shouldn't be if the bike was new and you've only done 300 miles).

 

[sabian92]

The rims are clean and the pads aren't full of gunk or anything, it was just that one was basically sat on the rim and the other was an inch away. It brakes fine which is a start though.

I'll give it a go and see how I get on. I'd like to get it sorted out because I want to have a go at truing my wheels on my own.

 

[TheDoctor]

There's an adjustment screw on one of the brake arms, but if it's that far out I expect it's been knocked, possibly as the wheel went in / out. Grab hold of the whole brake assembly and move it round so it's roughly equal each side (you may need to slacken the brake bolt slightly), tighten the cable if needed, then use the screw to adjust the gap.
It's really a 5 minute job, if you take your time...

 

[sabian92]

Sorted it out, got 2 nicely adjusted brakes

Thanks very much - definitely a big help.