How To Tighten Bicycle Brakes: Two Ways To Adjust Your Own Brakes

Your bicycle brakes are some of the hardest working parts of your bike, and this is why they are always subject to a tremendous amount of wear and tear.

Regularly maintaining your bicycle brakes is an important factor in keeping your bike working well and ensuring your safety on the road or bike trail. To this extent, you must know how to tighten bicycle brakes.

How To Tell If You Need To Tighten Your Brakes?

Pull your brake levers, much like you would if you were biking and wanted to slow down or stop. If the lever touches the handlebar, the brake cable is too loose, and you need to tighten it.

Generally, when squeezed, the space left between your brake lever and your handlebar should only be around 3-4 cm.

Tighten The Barrel Adjuster

If you need to tighten bicycle brakes, the first thing you should try is to tighten your barrel adjuster.

You will find your bike’s barrel adjuster at the intersection of your brake cable and the lever. Slowly turn the barrel adjuster clockwise, and this will loosen it while tightening your brake cable.

Test your breaks again, and if they are now tight enough, you’ve solved the problem.

Readjust The Break Caliper

If fixing the barrel adjuster didn’t work, try adjusting the brake caliper. The caliper is where the pads are attached, and you should see a bolt that holds your brake cable to the caliper.

Take an Allen wrench and turn the bolt counter-clockwise to lose it. Be sure that you don’t unbolt it entirely; just turn it about two to three times.

Pull your bike cable outwards till you see your front brake pads getting closer to the rim. Rescrew the caliper bolt and then test your breaks again.

If neither of these two methods works, it might be time to seek the help of a professional.