Saturday, July 24, 2010

Brake Issue Finally Solved

I had been having this rear brake vibrating issue for quite a while. Basically when I pulled the lever, the entire bike vibrated violently and emitted high pitch noises like a semi truck stopping in a hurry. I tried organic pads, anti-squeeling compound, multiple bleedings, filing pads, nothing worked.

Finally I couldn't take it any more and got a new set of brakes (Avid Elixir CR) to replace the Juicy 7, hoping the issue was associated with the Juicy, which has a reputation of being loud. New brakes installed, I rode it around the block and the brake was silent. "Great!" I thought.

After shortening the cables I took it to Schaeffer for a spin. BTW, the temperature outside was in triple digit, the two bottles I bought with me lasted only a little over an hour. Anyway, on a fast section, I applied the brake, the vibration came back, and stayed.

I sat in the garage carefully inspect the whole set up. The nice thing about the Elixir vs. Juicy was the top loading pads, which allowed to check the pad/rotor alignment. What I found was that the back side of the caliper was elevated a little too much so the pads were not fully engaging the rotor. Easy enough to fix. I put two 1-mm Ti washers in place of the original adjusting washers to lower the caliper. Tightened everything and gave it another spin - dead silent with tremendous stopping power. Problem solved.
Posted by Picasa

4 comments:

Tom said...

Good detective work.
I'll have to remember to check the verticals alignment next time I'm having problems.

Anonymous said...

Nice work.. and now with spare Juicys. Brz

Dkeg said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dkeg said...

I don't se where the Ti spacer is. I am having the same problem.