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    Took bike in to tighten brake cables, now the back brake doesn’t seem to engage at all

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    5 Comments

    4. peanutbuttershudder on

      To answer all the questions, yes, we stopped at a shop and the brakes were working fine for the ride back home (~45 minutes) and then stopped working basically as soon as we made it back to the apartment. Could just be a coincidence and we are going to take it back to the shop, but obviously I have trust issues now and was hoping to try fixing it myself with the collective wisdom of what seems like a very kind/helpful subreddit. No worries if we can’t figure it out with this one video though, I’ll try to take it back this weekend.

    5. nateknutson on

      The video is of a brake that someone who doesn’t know about bikes adjusted by using up all the barrel adjuster on, creating a state where the arm bottoms out on the caliper. To fix it:

      Undo the cable anchor

      Reset the barrel adjuster all the way in

      Loosen the caliper mounting bolts to the point where you can access the pad adjuster withotu getting blocked by the hub

      Anchor the cable with the arm near the very bottom of its travel, just enough used to prevent slack in the cable (almost no arm travel used)

      With the pad adjuster still accessible, adjust it to where its final position will need to be without any further use of the barrel adjusters/cable. In other words, you’re adjusing it so that lever throw is in its final state

      Adjust the caliper position and torque the mounting bolts.

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