You notice, before a long ride, that one brake pads is closer to your rim than the other… You don’t want that, so you grip both sides of the brake and force the offending side over so the brakes are equally spaced at the rim. You think you’re okay, but a week later you notice they’re off again.
They’re off again because you centered them improperly (or because you installed your wheel improperly in the dropouts – the dropouts being the two U-shaped “thingies” that hold the wheel, not because there’s some mysterious force working against your brakes, so fear not.
This post will deal with centering Center Mount Brakes. In my first post in this installment, I said I’d go easiest to hardest and last week was how to properly tighten a bolt on a bottle cage, so don’t worry, this one is going to be easy. The hard part is getting all of the lingity down right, and then in dealing with inferior brakes. If you bought one of those Denali road bikes and are expecting anything on that bike to be easy, you’re in for a surprise or fifteen. Cheap bikes are cheap because they use cheap parts that are poorly manufactured, fit together poorly, are heavy and are poorly engineered to begin with – all in the name of bringing you a road bike that costs $300. You will be able to use these instructions to fix the brakes on a cheap bike, I’ve used these steps on friend’s bikes, it’s just a lot more touchy getting everything to work properly. Suffice it to say, you usually get what you paid for and if you paid $300 for a new road bike, you bought headaches. Sorry. It sucks but the brakes on my Venge cost almost as much as your bike.
That said, these are center mount brakes (we’ll go with the one’s I have on all three of my road bikes, Shimano, and the 105 line):
In fact, the actual instructions from Shimano are here.
The first thing to take note of is the barrel adjuster on this set of brakes. It’s not a cheap threaded star with a secondary lock bolt. No, this is the real deal spring loaded dealio and easily adjustable. What you can’t see on this set of brakes though, is the set screw that allows you to adjust where the brake pads sit in relation to the brake track on the rim. That’s right here:
See, the problem with yanking the brakes to center them on the wheel is that it could very possibly lead to the mounting parts wearing or worse, could damage the carbon fiber (most forks are carbon fiber nowadays). That, and it just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do when turning the set screw a couple of times will net better results. First, and most important, check to make sure your wheel is properly seated in the dropouts. With the bike standing straight up and down, resting against your leg, reach down and open the quick-release lever. Give the bike a little shake without knocking it over, and see if that centers the wheel in the brakes. If so, simply close the QR lever and call it good (doing this with the bike upside-down is a lot easier btw). If that doesn’t do it, here’s how you adjust your brakes, and I’ll go back and forth in the photos, dramatically, so you can see just how far the pad moves (the set screw only moves one pad because that’s all that is required to center the brakes – you’ll see).
For this post, I made the front right pad farther away from the brake track on the rim:
Left side:
Right Side:
Now, when I call out sides, right and left, best to keep it simple by where it would be if I were atop the bike… So the right pad is farther out, right? Even though it’s on the left in the photo. To fix this… Are you ready? Turn the set screw about a quarter of a turn, clockwise. That’s it.
Crazy, right?
But what if the left side is out farther? The set screw only moves the right pad! Relax, it’s okay, it’s only slightly more complex.
If the left pad is out on the front brake, you turn the set screw counterclockwise to open the right side up, then you simply turn the barrel adjuster:
Counterclockwise to close the brakes … it’s that easy folks. You can make your brakes perfect with a Phillips head screw driver (or a metric Allen wrench for some brakes) and about 30 seconds.
Rear brakes you do the exact same thing… Use the set screw to open or close the left side this time. If you pulled the left arm closer, your done. If you opened the left side to match the right, then use the barrel adjuster to close them back up.
Done.
New Terms
Brake set screw: The screw on top of the brake that moves a brake arm when you turn it.
Now, next week we’re going to stay on the brakes and learn how to adjust and change the brake pads and set them using the cable. Now we’re going to get real. Stay tuned. Fear not my friends, this is very simple.
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