Bicycle Mechanics - V-Brake lever bearings

Hello All,

I recently pulled apart my low end tektro v-brake levers to see what was going on inside - as the left lever had become quite wobbly of late. This revealed that the bearings or bushings inside the lever housing had worn out. They appeared to be made of a soft rubbery material.

This made me wonder if it possible to get replacement bearings/bushings for brake levers?

I had a bit of a look at the shimano and tektro websites for information about new v-brake levers - but all of them are pretty quiet about what sort of parts they use inside their brake levers. They are also pretty quiet about how the design varies from model to model - tektro particularly had little detail and meaningless range names like quartz. Does anybody know what sort of things vary from a low end brake lever to a high end one?

Are the high end ones just made of lighter stiffer materials or do they use bearings with less friction, longer life? Are the designs much different?

Brendan

the only different is lighter materials. what you are talking about are bushings than look some what like a washer.you might be able to go to your lbs and get a use lever and use parts from it to repair your. then again you could buy one or set because of their price.

Thats interesting, the main difference being the materials. There is not much inside the lever for the manufacturers to vary (apart from the shimano servo-wave models)

Thanks for the LBS used parts tip.