Avid Juicy 5 brakes

boz64

Hi

I'm new to disc brakes having only bought my Trek EX8 a year ago. They seem awesome in comparison to the v-brakes on my old hard tail!

However, having recently ridden of couple of mates bikes with disc brakes, mine seem to be not quite right. My barkes are Avid Juicy 5s. My mates are running Avids too... Elixirs I think.

The problem is this... I seem to have a fair amount of travel in the levers before the pads start to bite. My friends' brakes seem to bite almost straight away when the lever is pulled.

My guess is that perhaps there is not enough fluid in my brakes? They are not spongy, so I don't think three is air in the fluid.

Any thoughts or advice please.

Cheers

nicklouse

try adjusting the lever reach away from the bars and go and use them a bit.

they should come back to normal, then adjust the reach to suit.

it is just the pistons having not self adjusted just yet.

boz64

Thanks for the tip.

I've had the bike about a year now so shouldn't the pistons have self-adjusted already? Do I take the levers all the way out by the way?

Cheers
Boz

nicklouse

they constantly adjust. some times they just get stuck.

maybe you also have a sticky piston?

when you pull the lever does the rotor get moved to one side? if yes adjust the caliper to suit.

onlytovey

If you've been out riding in the wet and grit then you may have worn the brake pads down and they might need changing. good quality cheap ones can be bought from superstarcomponents, i'd recommend the sintered ones for the winter. if there's loads of pad left then you can adjust the bite point of the levers via a small screw on the underside of the lever blade.

weeksy59

boz64 wrote:

However, having recently ridden of couple of mates bikes with disc brakes, mine seem to be not quite right. My barkes are Avid Juicy 5s. My mates are running Avids too... Elixirs I think.

The problem is this... I seem to have a fair amount of travel in the levers before the pads start to bite. My friends' brakes seem to bite almost straight away when the lever is pulled.

Mine are and have always been axactly the same... so have other juicy 3/5 bikes i've ridden.

Anonymous

I've noticed other's Elixirs have a strong bite also. A bit too strong if you ask me. It's either stop or go. The Juicy 3/5s are just different braking I think (I won't go into the hassles of pinging brakes, that's another matter though I've not heard the same on Elixirs).

They do need regular bleeding though and you'll get a more solid bite by doing so, but just not as sharp as Elixir.