I can't fix brakes. I watched videos, i see what they do, but when I do it, they are still bad.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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From a childhood of dealing with them myself, my best guess is you don't have them resting close enough to the wheel. They need to be just a few millimeters away otherwise your brakes are mushy and weak
My issue is more the brake cables than the brake pads. The cable is too loose, then it is too tight, its never just right.
Have you tried messaging with the barrel adjuster for the cable? I normally adjust the cable with the bolt to get roughly the right tension, then use the barrel adjuster to find tune it.
I’m somewhat relieved that I’m not the only one.
Bikes would be a commodity where a subscription model would actually make sense. You make my bike go vroom vroom and I give you Earth moneys in return. But somehow only shit is subscription based these days.
* Yes, I know bikes don’t go vroom. But what is the onomatopeia for a bike?
I have a bike subscription! They are fairly common in major metro areas like NYC, Philly, Boston, DC, Montreal but they are typically called bikesharing and not bike subscription because you aren't subscribing to a single working bike, you are subscribing to a network of working bikes, which actually works really well from the perspective of not worrying about it getting stolen or finding a secure place to store it. Harder to manage in lower density areas though, of course
Yes, I know bikes don’t go vroom.
You could put a card in the spokes like we did when we were kids...
One thing I find interesting is it's not enough to build bike infrastructure, you also need to make driving more inconvenient to incentive people to stop. The most recent example I cam think of is how New York City started to toll drivers in one very specific area, and as a result traffic went down while using other methods of transit went up
Sometimes you have to "break in" squeaky new breaks for a couple of minutes (accelerate, break hard, repeat)
Legend is missing their cape
One of my favourite features of the place I currently live in is that there is a co-op bicycle workshop, where you get access to tools and the expertise of a seasoned bicycle mechanic for free.
I'm considering volunteering a bit there. It's just such a beautiful thing to exist.
There's one in my city as well.
But it's more than an hour bike ride to get to, and has several bike unfriendly roads/ bridges on the route to get there...
3 minutes riding through the park for me, all downhill. I'm truly blessed.
Well spoke.
They build roads in the US and it makes things further apart, so people need cars and fuel to get places, so the car an fuel purchases get taxed to help build roads ... they build roads and it makes things further apart ...