Tightening Up Hydraulic Disc Brakes

newtothisish

Hi there,

i have an odd problem was wondering if anyone can help.

Yesterday my back brake was rubbing slightly so I did what I usually do to fix that. Loosen the mounting slightly, hold on the brake and tighten the bolts back up to centre the brakes. This seemed to work fine, no rub, brake seemed to apply but didn't immediately take it for a test ride. Later in the day I went riding, and the back brake just wasn't doing anything, was barely applying at all.

I fixed the problem temporarily by adjusting the reach on the lever so it was further away and I could get more pressure on it, but this seems like it must be a quickfix and isn't addressing the real problem.

Does anyone know what might have caused this sort of thing or what I did wrong?

My brakes are Avid Elixir 3's.

Thanks in advance for your help!

The Rookie

newtothisish wrote:

Does anyone know what might have caused this sort of thing or what I did wrong?

My brakes are Avid Elixir 3's.

There is your problem.......

What may well have happened is in the process you've knocked the pads back into the calliper and need to advance the pads to bring them back to the disc.

Using that technique to align the calliper only works if the pads haven't worn off square, once they have you can end up with a right mess of angles! Better to align the callipers by eye.

newtothisish

Ah OK, I have had pretty good success doing it by eye before but also success doing it this way. Maybe I should revert back to eyeing it!

When you say advance the pads, how do you mean to do that?

Are you also supposed to do something to help them self-align once your tightened up?

The Rookie

You remove the wheel, squeeze the lever so the pads come out to just too far, so when you let go they should come back enough that the disc just fits, its speeding up the natural adjustment process for wearing pads.

No, once the calliper is aligned that's it.