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Side-pull brakes broken. Pull to one side and get stuck. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by to c/bicycle_touring@lemmy.world
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Update: It's fixed. More info in the comments.

I searched and couldn’t find any general bicycle forums here on Lemmy. This one seemed to be the closest match out of the three I found. So I hope it’s okay to ask for help here.

I have the exact same problem as in this video:

https://youtu.be/aP-N6D7NKtc

But the solution he presents does not work for me. All of the videos on YT about sidepull brakes have the same general solution and none of them work.

I center. I tighten. Etc. And when I pull the handle, the cable yanks the whole caliper sideways and I’m right back where I started.

I used to work on my cars when I owned them. I can fix my computer. My sink. My toilet. Everything on my bike except the brakes. They make no sense to me.

The anchor and the pivot of sidepull brakes are the same. So the fact that the caliper is being yanked to one side makes sense. The functional brakes I see don’t make sense. How do these things work?

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[–] [S] 2 points 3 days ago*

UPDATE

I fixed it! Thank you so much to everyone here who helped!

My findings:

It all hinges on the notches the spring slides in to.

If the notches aren’t lined up and/or the spring slips out of the notches when the brake is pulled, one of the brakes gets stuck.

So to center the brakes, focus on the notches not the brakes.

Whichever pad is sticking, make sure the spring on that side is resting on the bottom of the notch and not the top when you center the brakes.

Otherwise, when you use the brakes, the spring will get pulled down to the bottom of the notch and the brake on that side will get stuck.

My notch is much larger than the one in the image so there was a lot of play there.

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