Hello, and welcome to a very useful instructional on how to maintain the brakes on your Pedego
electric bike. This video will show you how to adjust the mechanical disc brakes, and
to be clear we're talking about the Avid BB-7 disc brakes. If by chance you happen to be
using a drum brake on the older cruisers, or a hydraulic disc brake such as on the Ridge
Rider, then this video won't be very helpful at all.
Now this video is broken into two segments: The 1st we'll discuss the problems and why
they happen. 2nd we'll talk about fixing them. So! Let's jump in!
First up is the squeaking noise! This first thing to note is that the Avid BB-7 brakes
are some of the best mechanical disc brakes on the market today.
And they squeal!
That's just the way it is. If the squealing is really bad it can be mitigated, but realistically
the brakes will never be totally silent. So let's talk about the pads: One of the more
common problems with disc brakes is simply wear and tear. If you ride down hills a lot
the pads will wear down. When the pads wear out completely the stopping power will get
really bad and the brakes will sound like nails on a chalkboard.
Aside from that, sometimes the rotor gets bent just a tiny bit which results in a small
ticking sound through each rotation. The rotor is made of solid metal, so you can still touch
it ' stuff, but if you bash it up against something you'll want to ensure it's working
before you commit to a bigger ride. Sometimes the brake caliper goes out. Which
is this while entire assembly right here, and it gets jostled out of place. This is
evident with ticking, but it's also more apparent when you try to fix it and nothing else seems
to work. Lastly is the caliper arm. On rare occasion
the caliper arm (which is this extension with the 5mm bolt squeezing this tiny little plate)
... it will lose grip on the cable and it just needs to be tightened up again. This
is mostly evident when squeezing the brake handles feels totally useless and the bike
doesn't stop at all!
So that covers what goes wrong with the brakes, and why. Let's talk about fixing it!
Alright; the squeaking (or squealing). If you take a clean Scotch-Brite pad (or sandpaper
if you really have to) and scrape the face of the rotor this will actually give the surface
a layer of depth without compromising the stopping power. After you've done that you
can clean up the face of the rotor with some rubbing alcohol and a paper towel, but NEVER
put any kind of grease or lubricant on the rotor or the brakes at all. Brakes are meant
to stop, after all. Alright, the pads! Sometimes the pads wear
unevenly; wearing too much on one side rather than the other. So you may need to only adjust
one of the two sides using these red discs on either end of the caliper. Get the right
angle looking at the slot that the disc fits into (it actually helps if you have a piece
of paper behind you for contrast) and then you can inch the pads forward on either end
by twisting those red dials on the brake caliper. The outside one you can actually do by hand,
but the inside one is best done with a tool called T-25.
Sometimes you need to adjust the placement of the entire caliper, which I'll get to in
a sec. Let's talk about the rotor! If the rotor is
bent and you hear a ticking sound on each rotation you can actually grab that spot with
a glove or maybe a paper towel or something, and bend it away from that particular spot.
If the rotor is bent so bad that you can actually SEE the bend in the metal, then you'll never
fix it, it's trash... sorry..
Um, oh yeah! The caliper!
So if that entire caliper is out it actually just needs to be aimed and centered just a
little bit to get everything exactly right. These two little 5mm bolts hold the caliper
into its base with this system of convex and concave washers to provide some flexibility.
Now, normally the caliper is only out a tiny bit, so start by loosening the 5mm bolts only
a little bit. This will ensure that when you push the caliper into position with your thumbs,
the adjustments will only be minor adjustments. Now try to get it as centered as possible.
It's alright if the gap is kind of big 'cause you can actually go back and turn those little
red dials to get the pads just... in the right spot.
OK! The caliper arm! You can easily tighten this up. Simply loosen the 5mm bolt and then
that arm will spring loose (which is fine... don't worry). Use your hands to pull the arm
as far up the cable towards the front of the bike as you can and then allow a little bit
of space by sliding back the other way just a tiny bit and then tighten up the 5m bolt
all the way. Now check the brake by squeezing the handle up at the front of the bike and
then go back to adjust that arm again if the handle either does nothing, or it's always
on full brakes. You'll have to do this a little bit of back-and-fourth to get it just right,
and a tiny tiny tiny amount of difference in that arm makes a big, big difference in
how it performs. So don't be frustrated if it takes awhile, you want to get it exactly
right. OK! Now you know how to maintain the brakes!
You can check out the links below for further assistance or shoot us an email using:
support@bluemonkeybicycles.com And we'd be happy to help.