How to Adjust Bike Brakes _ Bike Maintenance

Hi , my name is Jesse mcdonough and I'm here at Spokesman Cycles in New York City , right by Union Square .

I'm a bicycle tour guide in New York and , uh , formerly a bike messenger and I'm here to tell you a bit about the bike .

Let's talk about brake adjustments .

There's a number of different reasons why your brakes could need to be adjusted , the brakes themselves could be rubbing on the rim , they might not be tight enough .

Um , but we'll start with just tightening the brakes themselves .

So first you see this brake , it's in pretty good shape .

You really want two finger lengths between the handlebar and the brake when you squeeze .

So here you got plenty of room , but on this side , the brake itself goes almost all the way to the handlebar , way more than two finger lengths .

So here , clearly , it's not tight enough .

We're gonna try to start with the minor tightening with the barrel adjusters .

So here the barrel adjusters just twist and as you pull them out of the brake handle itself , um , this will tighten the brake .

In this case , it's probably tightening it a bit more , but not necessarily enough , you still have less than two finger lengths .

So now that opening the barrel adjuster did not tighten your brakes enough .

What we're gonna have to do is open up the V brake so that you can tighten your brake cable here .

So you're gonna take an Allen wrench and all you gotta do just unscrew this just a bit .

So you pull the brake cable tight here so that the brake pads are resting along the rims .

So you can hear them rubbing along the rims here .

And at that point , you want to tighten the cable to exactly where it should be .

And if you notice I left the barrel adjuster open .

So that way now the rim is just barely rubbing along the brake pads .

But as you tighten the barrel adjuster , because the brake cable is already tight again , it should open up just perfectly so that your brakes are the exact tension you want them .

But at the same time aren't gonna be rubbing on the wheel .

So we tighten the barrel adjuster here and see how that worked .

Perfect .

You got two finger lengths and a nice tight brake .