kenshinvt

Has anyone messed with the little black plastic nub that sits on the spring on the back of a pair of ultegra brakes? Not sure what other Shimano dual pivot brakes use this. Park tool calls it a "spring guide" and shimano calls it an "arch spring tension adjustment." You can set it to either "normal" or "high" by reversing it.

I bought my brakes second hand and noticed it was set to high. I decided to set it to normal on both sides.. boy was that a mistake. According to the shimano tech docs you are supposed to hold the spring with a pair of pliers and flip it backwards to change. That seemed waaay harder than it sounds--i ended up cracking one of the plastic blocks when one of the springs slipped out of my pliers. I mangled the other. It's just way too much tension to do it easily plus the block fits very tightly.

The cracked one was still fine on the high tension (i.e., the thicker) side. So both of my brakes are set to the high tension setting. Does anyone use this or has anyone changed it?