Brakes: to replace or not to replace?

[mrmacmusic]

A broken spoke on my Flight gave me an opportunity to give my recently acquired Cube Attention a turn on the commute yesterday. It's the first proper mileage I've put it through and it highlighted a few niggles, and to be honest, my initial excitement about picking up a nicely-specced second hand MTB has dwindled somewhat (sorry Larry, no offence intended).

Forgetting for a moment the various creaks and rattles that I need to investigate, the pressing issue is the brakes. I posted a few weeks ago about the rear brake binding, and following two trips to the LBS I thought this had been dealt with, however it's still a problem. The advice from here (thanks everyone ) is that I ought to strip and re-build them, but whilst I'm all for learning the skill and saving money, I don't really have the time – plus re-building the calipers wouldn't do anything about the wear and tear at the lever end (wobbly levers, no spring etc..).

I thought the rear brake was the only problem, however whilst for my ride to work the front brake worked great and was biting nicely, going home it just lost all bite/power and I could even hear it making a pulsing noise under braking.

Diagnosis? I reckon I need to replace both brakes. I understand it's the risk you take buying a second hand bike and we're talking routine maintenance here, but having already coughed up £85 for a new chain, rear cassette and the time the LBS faffed about with the rear brake, I'm struggling to justify throwing money at the Cube.

I don't want to buy second-hand brakes from eBay, as I'm more than likely just to end up with more of the same problems (and maybe a few others to boot), and I know that sticking brand new brakes on will give me, well, brand new brakes, which should last a good while. I've spotted direct replacements here for £110, but looking around the various outlets there seem to be lots of alternative options including Shimano and Avid.

Maybe I just need convincing that new brakes are worthwhile, but at that money, I think I'd have been better dropping £500 on a new MTB

What would you do? Sell it on and put that £110 brake money to a new MTB? Or would you replace the brakes, and if so would you stick with Hayes, or go Shimano/Avid..?

Help please!!

 

[amasidlover]

I was faced with a similar dilemma at the end of the year; I needed a new dynamo hub, new bottom bracket and chainset and had a few niggles. I posted on here about it and because its a fairly decent frame (a nice 531 steel frame), I was strongly recommended that it would be worth something to someone and not to just get rid of it. So in the end I priced up all the bits and pieces I needed and threw in a cycle maintenance course and set of tools and it came out about £300-£400. And this would (in theory) get me to the point of having a good quality steel framed 105 equipped bike with dynamo lighting, nice rack etc. Doing this from scratch would have been over £1000 (but obviously everything would have been new).

Now I could have just about afforded the new bike (and it would have been shiny and new!!), but in the end what swung it for me was doing the work myself. In the past I've always taken my bike to various LBSes for most things - sometimes this has been expensive, sometimes quite reasonable. But it usually meant; parts at 'full' (rather than internet) price, the odd niggle still left to fix, being without the bike for days (which is a pain as I commute on it) and not knowing how to deal with things at the road side.

So I ordered lots of bits and I now know how to do most jobs on the bike myself (meaning minimal 'downtime') and have a bike which actually is, at least until I write this, niggle free.

So I guess if you think the frame is worth keeping and upgrading the components on, or you want to learn to do the work yourself then keep it, if not then its new bike shopping time... Incidentally in the end I found that none of the jobs on their own actually took me as long as the time I would have spent going back and forth to the bike shop dropping it off and collecting it; apart from possibly building the wheel which was the first one I had done and took 3 hours.

 

[mrmacmusic]

Thanks amasidlover

Part of my dilemma is whilst I like it, I'm not overly attached to keeping the frame if getting rid of it is the sensible thing to do, but I wouldn't really be comfortable selling it on with the brakes as they are. I've also started to ask myself what's going to need replaced next?

Having said that, I'm comfortable with regular maintenance and replacing components (although I've not got any spare spokes), and the other niggles may well be easily sorted for very little (or no) money. I think I'm going to have to give the Cube a thorough going over this weekend and look at exactly what needs done to get it ship-shape.