Thanks all for your feedback. So I haven't yet bought that cutter but I eventually will..next time I need to cut. In the meantime, the brakes saga reached an uneasy ending yesterday
- well kinda. Here's the story:
- The first arm was already off if you guys remember and I was stuck on the 2nd arm.
- Eventually I managed to use an adjustable wrench and rotate/yank/pull it off. Yay.
- Clean, shine, grease, screw back.
- Tighten both sides. Adjust brake pads. Adjust cable.
In short, I'd disassembled the entire brake as suggested earlier and learnt how it looks inside. So that in itself is a *win* for me. But now everything was clean, no rust, no dirt no nothing...but still no tension. Cable jumps out
So I decide I'm done with this and ride it to the LBS with just the back brakes working..kinda. But... as it turns out, there was that spring... which seemed very very loose anyway (and which I didn't know was a spring btw - thin stick of metal) which broke off while I was taking the brake off. So the LBS said that's it...get a new brake - spring's gone and you can't replace it. 18$.
Oh well. I'll put the new brakes on sometime and it'll hopefully all be well. Its just sad I couldn't get it to work by myself...but anyway I learnt a bunch of things.
Will revisit this thread and read the detailed mechanics posted too.
Thanks all again.
p.s: cny-bikeman: Yes totally...I *could* just go get it fixed ... but just wanted to play around and see if I could get it to work by myself. That's all. Thanks for your help.