right i asked that to my lbs too. question for you - has this happened before? have you had issues with the cage? how bad was the bending? in my case, it happened only once and it wasn't too bad. my lbs inspected it and gave his reccomendation that i would be fine. he also told me that...when you brake and the noodle squeezes in, the cage feels force in the horizontal direction (perpendicular to the weels). it does not feel force in a way that will twist the cage in the vertical direction (which is how my cage got loose to begin with). under these particular circumstances, i said ok, cool. i was still able to find an excuse new brakes since i wanted more clearance for fenders.

on one hand i don't want to advise you to spend money when you don't need to. however, these are brakes, they save us from broken bones (just imagine a single mile without brakes ). being liberal with money on brakes can't be bad thing, can it? i can justify new brakes since you are having issues with your current one anyway. so its up to you. i say its only $25 - go ahead and get yourself a peace of mind. now if your lbs insists that you don't need to replace (like my lbs did) and you're cool with that then that's another option. i was about to do the latter but i kept getting paranoid and thinking about the rear brakes as back up. that frustration wasn't worth it for me.