My back tire kept deflating so I was trying to change the tube. I’ve put in a new tube before, once on this new-ish bike, and several times on my old bike (which was run over, RIP). Both bikes have/had v brakes, and I’ve never had trouble detaching them; like, the whole point of the v brake is that it’s super simple. I changed my front tube last time and took off the wheel no problem, but for some reason I just can’t figure out how to detach the brake on my back tire?
The first two pics are of my back brake, and the third one is of my front brake. The back brake seems to be a little different in that at the end of the cone part where it begins to taper, it flares out again, and the gap at the top of the clasp seems disproportionately small, so I just can’t seem to release it. If you look at the picture of my front brake, it looks somewhat different.
Am I just totally missing something? Any advice would be greatly appreciated 😭🙏
(Also, excuse the salt all over my bike, it’s icy out here)
by Izzybellabe
4 Comments
you can use a 5mm wrench to loosen the pinch bolt on the cable so you can get the noodle (the silver tube) out of the cross brace. it’s sometimes like that, just a bit too tight to get over the tire. no problem, it happens.
The two noodles look pretty similar to me… are you saying that when you squeeze the brake arms together such that the hook is around the narrower part of the noodle, you still can’t pull the noodle up and out of the hook?
Pull the whole noodle through the hole, including the end of the cone part. If you don’t have enough slack try turning in the barrel adjuster to provide more slack, else you have to loosen the cable manually.
The gap at the top clasp does look smaller for the rear brake. Did you clamp it in the past before? or is the front one just looser? that I’m not sure. You can pry it wider if you really want, then adjust it back when reattaching.
Your particular brake ‘noodles’ are designed to be extra-easy to remove from the cage, that is why they have that narrow section. Here’s what I suggest: grab the noodle with your left hand and pull outwards, while pushing the arm with the cage inwards with the other hand. Here’s a photo showing half of that equation (I needed one hand to take the photo).
https://preview.redd.it/33wlb85nvufe1.png?width=1395&format=png&auto=webp&s=97e76b3a1d537463247dee0a57a46281fbcb5228