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Pro tip: I ran brake cables through the wrong side of the pinch bolt for 6 months
I was doing a tune-up on a commuter bike last Tuesday and the rear brake felt mushy no matter how much I adjusted the barrel. A guy at the shop in Portland asked to look at it and pointed out I had the cable clamped on the wrong side of the pinch bolt, which was basically robbing me of half my lever pull. I went back through my log and counted 14 bikes I'd set up that way since spring, all of them leaving with brakes that felt spongy. The fix took 10 seconds and the lever firmed right up, which honestly stung a little. Now I check the cable path before I even touch the barrel adjuster. Anyone else have a habit like this that a second pair of eyes caught?
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williamm826d ago
Are you sure it was actually robbing you of half your lever pull, or did it just feel better because you expected it to? I've seen plenty of cables clamped on what some folks call the "wrong" side, and most of those brakes worked just fine once the pads and housing were sorted out. A mushy lever can come from a dozen things: worn housing, stretched cable, contaminated pads, a dirty caliper, the list goes on. Blaming the pinch bolt side feels like the easy answer, and counting 14 bikes means you had 14 bikes with maybe 14 different problems. Ten seconds of fiddling can firm up a lever on a bike that never had the cable issue at all, because you moved something else while you were in there. If a second pair of eyes told me my setup was wrong on every single bike for six months, I'd want to see the actual lever feel data before I changed my whole routine.
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