12 Common MTB Disk Brake Maintenance Mistakes & How To Avoid Them

mounted wide disc brakes are brilliant and most of the time work really well with barely any maintenance of course you're gonna need to change those pads and perhaps bleed them every now and then just to keep them feeling nice but there are loads of easy mistakes to make when working on your brakes so today we're gonna be looking at a number of those mistakes and seeing what we can learn from them shimano actually asked us to make this video because there are so many common mistakes made when working on your brakes at home now some of these mistakes calito breaks not working particularly well some of them can mean loud squeaking and squealing and annoying things like that and actually some of them more importantly can mean the difference of your brakes not working at all so let's get to the bottom of this [Music] contaminating pads is an absolute classic and it's something we could all do really easily so you just got to take a bit of care now it's for this reason we recommend using a bottled lubricant on your chain because you can apply a droplet of blue basically to each link really easily and you're not wasting lube but you can't knock the convenience of a spray lube and of course you're going to need to use water displacers like bike protect and even a polish near your bike from time to time and it's that stuff that creates the mist when you spray it that gets near your pads and completely wrecks them especially if you're working on your bike outdoors because it's always going to be a bit of a breeze it's going to carry that stuff so use a bit of shop towel behind where you're spraying something like that just to protect your disc rotors and if you're particularly bothered you can even get disk rotor covers especially for this sort of job now in particular the polish is something worth mentioning because a lot of riders now start to use polish on their frames to stop mud sticking to it and it does work really well and you can also use it on your suspension forks in particular around the stanchions just to make them feel a bit more slippery if you're going to do that you've got to be careful because if you're going to spray in the direction of that like i keep seeing on social media that mist is going to go all over your brakes and yep you're cruising straight to a e if brakes don't work [Music] using old or the wrong brake fluid okay so for starters only ever use fresh brake fluid in your brakes whatever variety that is if your fluid looks like this and it's a bit gunky and it's got stuff hanging in it discard it get it recycled get yourself some fresh fluid now with brake fluid it comes in two major varieties there's dot fluid and there's mineral dot is a regulated fluid it stands for department of transportation and mineral is an unregulated fluid now you might think that doesn't sound quite as good but actually this is quite cool because of the fact designs like shimano can have their own fluid and their entire system designed around it so arguably it could be a better approach but the point is you need to use the correct fluid now within mineral fluid there's various different systems available magura for example use a blue fluid so you'd only use magura fluid with magura breaks shimano used the red fluid only use this with shimano brakes and so forth get the right fluid okay now one last thing just to say about brake fluids is mineral fluid the coolest thing about it is it doesn't absorb moisture over time so you can afford to have a bigger workshop size one of these which is great value whereas dot fluid actually absorbs moisture from the second you open the container over time it will absorb moisture so it means if you're not going to use all of that in one hit you need to discard it really so only use a small container it's the best way to save yourself a few pennies uh pasta's the oil please josh says more i love a bit of stuff and one last thing with mineral fluids because the fact they're using a mineral fluid or mineral oil in them some people are questioning whether you can use alternatives like baby oil even olive oil or sesame oil well no it's the answer okay so yes it will fill the cavity in your brakes and yes your brakes will technically work but as soon as they get heat in them or you start getting air in the system it's just going to be horrendous there'll be no consistency and ultimately you're sacrificing your own safety there because brakes are probably the most important part of your bike use the correct fluid in your brakes or you're asking for trouble [Music] a poor brake bleed is probably the number one problem that most people have for their brakes now of course bleeding brakes is a fairly systematic process you've got to push fluid into the system and get the air out but in particular with your rear brake on a mounting bike there's loads of points of which you've got acute angles that our hoses uh move into to accommodate the frame design you're gonna get trapped air in there so when you're bleeding your brace take a bit more time when you think you need to tap along the hose all the way and help that air find its way out in particular the biggest thing you need to do is make sure the caliper is the lowest point on the bike and your brake lever is the highest point to really help that air sort of migrate out of the system there you can even do what's called a mini bleed where you don't need to do a full system blue but both ends open you just have the lever end open and the lever up nice and high and work your way along that hose tapping away and you can help the air get out the system quicker do your brake levers feel slightly different when you're using them i does one travel to the bars a bit more than the other well if that's the case it's easy to adjust all you need really is a screwdriver possibly an allen key depending on your particular model and the tape measure now the lever adjustment point of how far away your brake lever is for the handlebars this can be adjusted on all models and brands of brake sometimes with a knob on the actual lever like these ones and sometimes using a small allen often a two and a half mil perhaps a three mil depending on the model of your brakes but on other brakes that have a few more features on them such as these xt brakes there's a secondary adjustment point this one is called free stroke on your brakes it might be called bite point adjustment or something similar like that and that is specifically in charge of basically when your brake pads contact the rotor so it's an adjustable point of contact there when you make this adjustment on the free stroke it actually moves the position of your brake lever slightly so you'll have to compensate by using your brake lever adjustment as well get the tape measure out get adjusting and you can have both of your brake levers feeling absolutely identical there's no reason for them not to and whilst on the subject of brake lever adjustments are yours even in the same position on the handlebars well this is another common one we see this all the time so start off by making sure your grips are installed correctly on the handlebars making sure they're correctly on and then get a tape measure out you want to measure your brake levers to make sure they're inboard by the same amount and then have a look at the angle of them now some handlebars hopefully have little markings on so you can actually correlate the markings on both sides but if yours don't then use a spirit level it's purpose played dragging brake pads yeah this one is really annoying and an actual classic mistake to make [Music] so joan seriously i'm telling you you've got to use allen keys you can't just keep using that uh hold on i thought it hurts for me [Music] so when you replace your brake pads which we all need to do at some point you need to reset the system now i know that some of you because i've done this myself will probably have made a mistake at some point we just pop the new pads in and maybe that lever just doesn't travel that much and you find they drag a bit so what you need to do is reset those pistons you can either do this with your old pads in using one of these pad space tools just to wiggle them back into place or you could use a tyre lever make sure that it's a nylon or a plastic one though because that's none damaging to the pistons themselves now as your brake pads wear on a bike the pistons will naturally move out to compensate and you'll probably find your lever travels a bit more than usual so you'll compensate with either the free stroke screw which you have on shimano or perhaps you've got a little dial on another brand of brakes there you have to make sure you reset those again when you change your pads and push those pistons back otherwise they're going to drag perhaps your brakes aren't feeling quite as powerful as you feel they should be or perhaps as your friends say theirs are well this primarily is down to them not being bedded in properly okay so when you're bedding your brake pads the whole point of this is to deposit an even amount of material around the rotors never drag your brakes uh as in like lightly drag them what you want to do is find a nice long sort of medium gradient hill work your way down the hill pulling the brakes probably at two-thirds of the power okay and until you come to nearly a stop and then carry on rolling and repeat to get to the bottom of the hill by the time you get to the bottom your brakes will start sort of grabbing a bit repeat the hill all over again but at a higher speed with more braking power again not quite stopping but coming to right slow down point off the brakes again and by the time you get to bottom hill your brakes should be bedded in nice and evenly now if your brakes are squealing or perhaps they're again they're just not quite as powerful as they should be they could be contaminated in which case well the first thing to say is when you have contaminated brakes and rotors you're probably not going to get them back again however it is worth a try if you're willing to do this get them off your bike use something like a disc brake cleaner and completely clean them i'd also recommend actually cleaning them again using almost boiling water with some fairy liquid and then again with boiling water basically everything possible to clean them leave them to dry completely don't be tempted to skip this stage then get some coarse emery paper and give the rotors basically a bit of a scouring down to give them a bit of traction on them and the same on the brake pads and then reinstall onto your bike and do the bedding in process now hopefully your brakes might work now this can help if your brakes have just had a light misting of oil just something like that but if they've been properly contaminated with a load of wool you're gonna need some new ones using the wrong cleaning products on your brakes now ideally you want to use as little cleaning products as possible near your braking rotor surfaces and on your brake pads they do a pretty good job of self-cleaning as they need to when you ride and often only need a bit of water on them however we all know riding on the roads you can pick up salts and other lubricants off cars and other bikes and things that get onto your brakes in which case you're going to need to use a dedicated brake cleaner now you won't beat proper disc brake cleaner however there are other products on the market you can use most bike cleaners like the bike washers you get are fine to use around your brakes but definitely check if you're unsure at all costs avoid getting anything else near breaks any waxes uh even a rag you clean your bike with don't go near your brakes and even your bare hands you have oils in your hands you can get onto those rotors and mess them right up your brake hose routing and also the length of them is actually quite vital now if your brake hoses are too long it's not the end of the world they're going to work fine but you could snag them so ideally you want them to be trimmed down nice and short for your controls but don't go too short because that itself can lead to more problems so in the ideal world you want to leave them leave them long enough that your bars can actually rotate as far as they can without hindrance so if you do crash they're not going to basically rip out at the brake lever end i've seen that happen lots of times now also it does constrict you to your brake lever angle and the height of your controls if your if your hosing is too short the other one to look out for another classic is rooting your brake hose for the front fork on the outside of the fork it's an easy mistake to make and although everything works fine it's easier to snag on things when you're riding and if you have a crash it's going to be crimped okay so make sure your hose rooting is on the inside of the fork and they should last a lot longer when you're installing a set of brakes to your bike you may well have to shorten the hoses now when you do this it's vital that you do it correctly okay so you need to cut the hose down completely 90 degrees if it's not the barbed attachment is not going to sit inside completely flush and then olive will not create the seal it needs to to stop air getting in and fluid getting out now something else to add is don't reuse those olives don't be tempted to do that even if they look okay use fresh fittings every single time and because you're working on your brakes then really you should be wearing gloves and ideally some eyewear as well have you ever gone to rock your bike backwards and forwards on the brake and felt like something's loose yeah now sometimes that can be your disc rotors and now if they are loose i should need to tell you to check them and make sure they're nice and tight there's two major ways of doing this there's the six bolt system like this one so definitely make sure each one of those six bolts is securely tightened or there's a center lock system which has a single point of adjustment here that uses a bottom bracket tool but more than likely it won't be your disc rotors at least it might actually just be the pads themselves which fractionally move inside the caliper in which case you've got nothing to worry about but it won't hurt you to check and finally and probably the most painfully is the brakes being a wrong way around now for whatever reason you might be getting a higher bike you might be loaning a bike for someone borrowing a friend's bike check the brakes the same that you're familiar with i ride my front brake on the right my rear brake on the left and i couldn't possibly ride any other way so definitely check otherwise it could be seriously seriously painful as with all of our videos hopefully this one has been useful let us know what you think in the comments underneath and let us know if you've made any of these classic breaking mistakes thanks for watching the video and see in the next one

Channel: GMBN Tech

Views: 249,367

Keywords: brakes, mtb brakes, mistakes, avoid, damaged brakes, shimano brakes, maintenance, bleeding, contaminated, deore, brake pads, oil, mineral, dot, gmbn tech, mtb tech, bike tech, mountain bike, Bicycle (Product Category), MTB, bicycle, gmbntech, GMBN, Global Mountain Bike Network, mountain biking, Downhill, XC, Cross Country, Enduro, MTB skills, bike skills, mountain bike skills, bike, bike riding, cycling, gmvn, doddy, andrew dodd, कॅ4283, ꖈ, ዩ, 1k, 1o, 1a, ኽ, 1t, ው, Ꮖ, sec-maint-mon, Ң, ፕ18, Ҫ, Ҧ, ҭ, Ҳ, Ҵ, Ҷ

Id: kCko8afCXLg

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021