How to Tweak Cyclocross Bike Brake Setup

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: So this particular frame, you know, it's a well-made, super high-end cyclocross bike, so they think of the little tweaks that are going to make your brakes work a little bit better. Sometimes if you, you know, have lower end, more generic bike, it doesn't have stuff like these built in. So just like running the front brake can be a bit of a pain in the butt to get a nice and straight cable run. Here on the rear of the bike, you know, you have to figure out how do you anchor your cable. Some bikes have these, you know, hangers built in here, and this is nice. It's got a little barrel that you can turn to slightly adjust the brake. Sometimes, you know, bikes don't have something built in, so there's a--instead there will be a hanger that's attached to your seat post. So what you can do, you know, you want to make sure that you got a nice, straight line. I think this cable is probably a little bit too short, probably binds a little bit because of that stiff bend in it. But, you know, things that you can do to avoid that sort of thing are, you know, maybe since this angle is so steep here, maybe running a cable hanger from the seat clamp would have worked a little bit better for this particular bike. You just have to keep into account the fact that there's no standards with this style of bikes. So little things like, you know, a straighter cable angle or, you know, a more consistent angle going down to the brakes is going to make a big difference. Other things with your brakes that you need to do, different types of rim braking surfaces require different pads. This is, you know, a carbon rim. So there are carbon-specific brake pads that are going to work a lot better. Because it's carbon fiber versus metal, obviously the coefficient of friction, all those sort of stuff can be way different. So you want to make sure that you're using the right little things like that, you know, the right brake pad and stuff like that. So you can see I've been using the wrong pads on this bike, so there's all these weird, white marks and stuff on the rim. I should probably change out my pads sooner rather than later to avoid that. But, you know, just make sure you're using good brake pads and a nice, clean, straight cable runs. Anything you can do to make your cable run straighter and shorter, it's going to be good."