♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Howdy folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Yes, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, Brad, you're gonna show us
how to adjust the the brakes on a four wheeled walker.
This is greatly needed.
- Yeah, 'cause there's millions of these out there.
People are using 'em. They're wonderful devices,
and they work excellent,
except if the brakes are not...
if the adjustment goes out.
- I literally would have to watch this video
if I was gonna do it.
I don't know how to do it.
- Yeah. It's easy once you figure it out,
but sometimes they're made,
some other ones are a little different
but generally, you'll get the concept in just a minute.
But what about this, Bob?
- And if you need to relax your muscles
before you do it, this is the device for you.
It's our X6.
- It's a giveaway.
This is what you could get. - Right.
- It's a beautiful gun. - For free.
It's our top gun, I would say. Top gun.
- It's the most powerful one we have right now, and yeah.
- Right. Go to bobandbrad.com and go to the giveaway section
and you can sign up, really easy to do it.
- It is. Okay, here we go.
The brakes on a walker.
When you squeeze 'em, it should lock
and you can't move the walker forward and backwards.
When you push down, it's called the parking brake.
Static brakes you push down and it should click, click.
And then you can sit on it. - It should hold.
- Yep. They'll lock it, then you can sit on it,
or it won't go down the hill.
- But over time they tend to loosen up and they don't hold.
- Yep. Two things can happen.
You can get 'em from the factory,
not adjusted properly.
- Sure.
- Which Chris just had happen.
- Sure. - Or they will always,
the cables always stretch.
It's just part of it.
You will need to adjust these after so many months of use.
- So once it's stretched out, you need to adjust again.
- Right. You do not need a lot of fancy tools.
It's nice to have a pair of pliers.
I've got two needle-noses,
but it doesn't matter.
Just get a pair of pliers that pinch.
A needle-nose can be helpful,
but the regular pliers-
- Works too? - That you have,
And like the thing in your kitchen,
usually people have a couple oddball tools in their kitchen.
- Sure.
- Maybe a adjustable wrench or a crescent wrench,
some people call it.
So... Actually, these did come outta my kitchen junk drawer.
(Bob laughs)
Yeah, literally. So here we go.
Let's zoom in on here,
and there's a mechanism here
for adjusting the tightness of the cable,
which goes through here.
And that's responsible for tightening the brakes down below.
Now, if we're gonna look close here,
you're gonna see this knurled section right here,
and then there is a little nut,
and that's called the lock nut, right there.
Now, sometimes the lock nut on some of these
are a large circular nut,
which is made for your fingers.
This one is actually made for a wrench.
You don't have to have a wrench to do it.
Now, hopefully the lock nut is not so tight.
If you can start to spin this like this and get it to move,
and if it doesn't, then you get your pliers on there
and you go like this and you'll get it to move.
Now, I'm tightening the-
- [Bob] Is that always counterclockwise, Brad?
- [Brad] Yep. I'm gonna...
Oh. No wonder it's not moving.
By the way, if the break is down, make sure it's up.
It's a lot easier.
- [Bob] Oh, I see.
- Now I'll be able to do it. - Oh, it's going easy, yeah.
- [Brad] Now, where is that pen?
All's you'll need to do is get this,
so you can start to see more threads
between this knurled nut - The nut.
- and the plastic.
And as you can see,
this distance from here to here is getting better, bigger,
and that's tightening-
- [Bob] So you're calling this thing the knurled nut.
- [Brad] Yep. It's rough, you know?
That's how you can get a grip on it.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] And then here's the lock nut.
So I'm gonna tighten that up until...
Actually, I got it too tight now.
Now, actually, it's locked right now,
so I have it too tight.
Usually what'll happen is if it's too loose,
you'll get about to here or so,
and you'd have to keep checking it.
If it's too tight, like mine is,
I'm gonna bring it back in the other direction
and let's see here.
That's good.
There. - Yeah. There you go.
- [Brad] So it is important
that you tighten the lock nuts.
So I'm just gonna grab it with this needle-nose.
If you have a wrench,
open end wrench or a combination wrench,
that works fine.
Lot of people that have those wrenches are pretty handy
and they don't need to watch this video,
so that's why I didn't.
So I'm gonna lock it there, and there.
We're done.
Now, there's the exact same mechanism down here.
So if you get this one all the way out
and then the threads
start coming out of the plastic mechanism,
that means you can't go-
- [Bob] And it's still not working.
- Yep.
- So if you get out and it's not working-
- Yep.
- You gotta then tighten that one up-
- Yep.
- And then go down to that one.
- Lock the nut,
go down to the one down here
and do the exact same thing.
Loosen this up and-
- [Bob] Does it matter, Brad, where the knurled nut is?
- [Brad] Well that determines how tight the cable gets.
- [Bob] It does?
- Yep. The farther away
that the knurled nut gets from here, then-
- [Bob] So this nut right here is not the one, though?
- [Brad] Yeah. That's really not a nut.
- Yeah. - You can call it a nut, but-
- [Bob] Well, what do you call it?
- [Brad] It's a knurled... I guess you can call it a nut.
- [Bob] So does it matter where that is?
- [Brad] Well, yeah.
I guess that wasn't clear
because the further...
I'm gonna loosen up
my lock nut again. - Right.
- [Brad] The further I'm gonna rotate it this way,
which means the threads are making this farther away
from the plastic handle, and-
- [Bob] Oh, that's all one thing?
- [Brad] Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.
- [Bob] I mean I'm moving this part separately of this part.
- [Brad] Right. Yep.
So this is a lock nut which locks
so this thing cannot be rotated.
- [Bob] Oh, I see.
That's what has to be moved out though?
- Yes. - Oh.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] I was thinking the nut had to be moved out.
- No, 'cause the nut just floats around there.
- Loosen, I see. - Yeah.
- [Bob] Now I'm starting to understand.
- [Brad] It's actually the distance
from this little shoulder
to the flat spot of the handle.
When that gets wider
and that tightens the cable-
- Gotcha. - And when it gets narrower,
it loosens it.
- [Bob] I completely misunderstood that.
- [Brad] Yeah. I probably did not explain it very well,
so hopefully this is...
I'm glad you're here
- Yeah. - 'cause a lot of other people
probably took it the same way. - Right.
- [Bob] So this whole thing has to be moved out?
- [Brad] Yes.
- [Bob] And this tightens it in place once it is-
- Right. - In the right distance.
- [Brad] This nut has nothing to do
with how tight the cable gets.
- [Bob] Sure.
- [Brad] It only prevents us from moving
so it doesn't adjust, yeah.
- [Bob] Gotcha.
- [Brad] Yep. Yep. Tanner's shaking his head. He gets it.
And again, down here is the same type of mechanism device,
so you treat it the same way.
Again, you get this all the way out
and it's still not working-
- [Bob] Down there you go.
- [Brad] Then you go down here and get that separated
- I see. - and tighten it up
even further.
There is one more thing.
If you can't get it tight enough
between the two of them
and you gotta extend it as far as they'll go,
then it gets a little more complicated
and you have to pull.
I'm not gonna get into that on this video.
- [Bob] No, that's beyond our-
- [Brad] You need another wrench,
and then you need sometimes two people, but-
- [Bob] That's beyond our (indistinct).
- [Brad] I've never had that happen.
- [Bob] Sure.
- [Brad] I've always been able to tighten them
between this and this.
- [Bob] How often do... Could you do it with one?
I mean, does it, usually you have to take both?
- [Brad] Oh. Most of the time.
- [Bob] It does?
- Yeah, because when you buy 'em,
they're in far,
so usually, unless it's a really old walker,
you're gonna be fine up here.
I've never, well, I shouldn't say never-
- Oh, so you usually don't have to go down there?
- Right.
- Oh, good.
- Typically, you get it tight enough up here
and you don't have to go down. - Good, good.
- I've only had to do that in 20 years,
less than a handful of times.
- Sure.
- So that's why we're just focusing on here.
It's gonna work.
You're gonna have breaks that work,
and now even this one is too tight.
I'm gonna have to readjust it now,
but it's not important for this video.
- You gonna change the oil while you're in there?
- Yeah. You gotta lubricate things a little bit too.
- Yeah.
- Good luck with, you know, working on this device.
You know, I wanna make sure that you don't say bad words
as a result of my poor explanations.
- Yeah. Brad is really a handy guy, so.
- Yeah. It's a curse.
(Bob laughs)
- A blessing and a curse, like Mark.
All right, thanks.
(electronic note sounds)