How To Tighten Bike Brakes? How About Loosen?
Jane Tu - November 16, 2022If you regularly adjust your bike brakes, they will function better and keep you riding safely. How to tighten bike brakes? A few basic tools will allow you to quickly resolve these problems. And we will introduce ways to help you to tighten your bike brakes.
Why Do You Tighten Your Bike Brakes?
There are many reasons you’d want to tighten your bike brakes or loosen them.
- To replace brake pads/rotors
- To stop them from squeaking
- To stop them from pulling and rubbing
- To tighten/loosen them
- To clean the bike brakes and harder-to-reach areas of your bike
- To maintain them
While the numerous moving parts can make it seem intimidating, adjusting bike brakes is not as difficult as it might seem. It is a skill that every cyclist should be able to perform.
The fundamentals of maintaining, adjusting, and aligning your bike brakes are covered in this article.
How to Adjust Your Brake Brakes?
On cable-based bike brakes, such as mechanical disk brakes and v brakes, there are two main points of adjustment. The barrel adjuster is the other, and one is at the caliper.
The horseshoe-shaped component over your tire on v brakes that is connected to the brake pads is called the caliper. The caliper is the object that resembles a claw at the disk in the middle of your wheel when you have mechanical disk brakes. The metal cuff on the brake cable near your brake lever is the barrel adjuster.
Your brake cable likely needs to be adjusted if you discover that you have to exert a lot of force to slow down or if it fits tightly into the handlebar.
Pull the Brake Lever to Judge How Tight Or Loose Your Brakes Are
If the brake lever is either too tight or too loose, that is the most obvious sign that something is wrong with your brakes.
The bike brake cable is too loose if the lever touches the handlebars. The cable is too tight if you can only just barely squeeze it. The brake lever should squeeze for 3–4 cm before getting challenging.
Tighten Or Loosen the Barrel Adjuster Accordingly
Making small adjustments with the barrel adjuster is possible after determining whether your bike brakes cable is too tight or too loose. The barrel adjuster can be adjusted by rotating it either clockwise or counterclockwise. This will alter the tension in the cable.
If you’re unsure, skip to 50 seconds in this video where it is demonstrated how to tighten or loosen the barrel adjuster.
After adjusting the barrel adjuster appropriately, squeeze the brake lever once more to see if the problem has been resolved.
Top tip: If you’re out on a ride, you can quickly and easily fix braking problems by tightening or loosening the barrel adjuster. Even if it doesn’t fix the issue, it might make things better for long enough for you to return home safely and fix it correctly.
Loosen the Bolt on the Brake Caliper to Readjust
After adjusting the barrel adjuster, if the brake lever is still too tight or loose, the cable on the bike brake caliper may also be off-balance.
By turning the cable’s mounting bolt counterclockwise with your Allen key, you can loosen the cable from the caliper without completely unbolting it. If you do, you’ll have to reassemble the bike brake. For a visual demonstration, watch the above video from 1:25 to 1:33.
Pull Or Release the Brake Cable through the Caliper
The caliper bolt should spring back away from the wheel and cable once it is sufficiently loosened. From here, you can tighten the brake by pulling the cable outward, or you can loosen it by letting the cable retract inward.
Keep in mind that with v brakes, you want the brake pads to rest a few millimeters away from the rim rather than touching it.
When you apply the bike brakes, a lever on the caliper that houses the cable threads through it and moves. Disk brakes have this same mechanism. Make sure the lever still has room to move and can’t reach back too far to contact the caliper before you tighten the cable. If it does, your ability to brake will be hindered and the pads won’t get to the rotor. To see an example of this, fast-forward to 1:11 in the video below.
Tighten the Caliper Bolt Back Up
Put your brakes on once you’ve located the point where the cable is snug and your brake pads are snugly affixed to the rim. Then, tighten the caliper bolt back up.
It’s worth going back to the barrel adjuster to make any last-minute adjustments to loosen or tighten the brakes if they’re still not quite right.
Do you know how to tighten brake cables or loosen them?
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