I was experiencing poor performance from the brakes on my bike, which needed to be fixed for safety:
- Needing to put a lot of force on the lever to get the brakes to operate
- The brakes were not releasing properly, the lever was failing to spring back
There can be several reasons for this, however, a common cause is the cable has rusted inside the brake cable housing. Undoing the cable clamp at the brakes showed that the cable was not moving smoothly and there were no other signs of obstruction, such as the cable being stuck.
There are lots so guides online which explain this this procedure, this was the guide I followed:
I purchased a brake cable replacement kit on-line which came with 4 new cables and all the accessories for less than £10.
Once the old cable was removed, the rust could be seen on the cable
It was a fairly simple tasks to follow the instructions, removing the old cable and housing, cutting the new housing to the correct length, lubricating the housing and re-assembling the brakes.
Once you have done any work on the brakes for your bike is important to test is thoroughly at low speed, ideally without riding it first to make sure they are working correctly.
This simple job took about 30 minutes and now means I can ride in the knowledge that my brakes will work correctly when I need them to.