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Warning: A customer's quick comment about brake cable friction got me thinking
I was tuning up a hybrid bike yesterday and the owner mentioned he noticed the brakes felt sluggish after new cables were installed. He said his old mechanic always told him to use a specific cable routing path on that frame. Has anyone else found that cable housing length adjustments made a bigger difference than they expected?
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oliverhernandez29d ago
That bit about the routing path caught my eye. I've seen a few bikes where a little extra housing length or a different curve through the frame stops the cable snagging on a cable guide or a tight bend. How did you end up routing that hybrid's front brake - did you stick to the stock path or try something different with the housing? I'm curious if the sluggish feeling went away just by tweaking the routing or if it needed a cable lube too.
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victorh8129d ago
Read in a mechanics forum that a bit of housing slack can fix that snagging issue.
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Three years ago I had a touring bike where the rear brake cable was almost binding on the seatstay bridge. I trimmed maybe half an inch off the housing and it was like night and day - the lever pull went from mushy to crisp in seconds. It's funny how something that small can make you want to scrap the whole setup when really you're just a few millimeters off. That hybrid sounds like it was fighting itself the whole time.
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