Hello all, our city just put in a new skatepark and my 7 year old daughter and I are learning to skateboard and bike!
I just grabbed a Sunday Scout complete from sourcebmx and assembled it last night. it went smooth til the very end when it came to the brakes, after inflating the tires the brake arms (odyssey Springfield) were touching the tires. I tinkered with it for 1.5 hours but was ultimately unable to get it situated correctly.
I notice that a lot of people ride brakeless and wanted to get some input on whether using brakes is like "training wheels" and if i should just learn from the beginning to not have them.
What are your guys thoughts?
by CarAudioNewb
11 Comments
Is your chain long enough?
Your wheel is to far forward. Look at the brake pads. Where they are at they wouldn’t touch the rim.just pull the wheel back some.
Does the tires rub the brake even with the cable fully installed?
Take the wheel off, deflate the tire, hook the brakes up, put the wheel back on, inflate the tire. You may need to adjust some things but it should work
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like the chain is too short. Are there any extra links with the chain? Did you use a chain breaker, or does it have a master link?
For the brake cable, I would need a bigger picture view to tell what is happening there. You could always contact the shop you bought the bike from and see what info they give you.
Get a picture of the rest of your cable, it is likely you need an adjustment further up the line.
Did you already adjust the cable for maximum slack?
U-breaks are a pain in the ass.
I plan to modify my frame in the future for V-brakes, I am too old to do anything where they will get in the way.
Also, brakeless is dangerous, brakes may seem unnecessary…… Until they are necessary. I guarantee if you go brakeless, it is a matter of time before you have an unnecessary injury, and if you’re middle aged like me, you don’t heal as fast.
For a Sunday I notice a lot of people mentioning the chain if you do not have a half link adding any to the chain will probably cause the axle to sit outside the dropout with the 2.4 tires and brakes these days it’s like a fine art getting them to coincide together probably a cable issue because the Springfield was designed to work with these zero tolerance configurations
I have been riding for 20 years, half of those brakeless and I just put the brakes back on after a few years and they’re not coming off anytime soon. I just love being able to go downhill at 40kph with no fear, knowing I’ll be able to stop without melting my shoe soles and tires.
One thing tho, It’s nice to learn not to use the brakes for tailtaps and half cabs for example and It can be hard to resist. The brake lever can hurt if you try barspins.
Can’t really help you fitting them just looking at that picture, if it’s not fixed already could you upload one with the whole drivetrain.
Once you connect those cables, it’s gonna lift those bars or the caliper off the tire…
Loosen the silver bolt attached to the pad and slide the whole assembly forward until the brake pad lines up with rim and retighten. Then attach cables and test.
Your brakes aren’t even connected to the cable. Your pads should be sitting fairly close to the rim, of course the brake arms are going to rub the tyre when they’re not being held in position by the cable.