RoboCheme

I bought some Kool Stop pads for the no name side pull brakes on my Giant OCR C2 and the new pads are significantly thicker. Amazingly my bike repair book doesn't go into moving the holders further away from the rims. How do you do that? There's some kind of nut on the cable, but that seemed to only reduce the distance to the rims. Do I have to readjust where the cable connects to the calipers?

roadfix

Try that. Your calipers should open wide enough for the thicker pads.

HillRider

You will have to loosen the cable fixing bolt to allow the calipers to open fully, replace the pads and then reconnect the cable while holding the brake arms in contact with the rim to remove the slack. Tighten the cable fixing bolt snugly, squeeze the brake lever gently to get a small amount of pad clearance and tighten the fixing bolt securely. Make fine adjustments with the adjusting thimble after that.

BTW, your "no name" brakes are probably Tektros and they are pretty decent components.

Rman

You would want to turn the black plastic part which is at the end of the brake housing clockwise. Opening the quick release on side of brake will help too. Make sure you adjust the pad angle as well.

The Kool Stop pads will make a significant difference in the braking performance compared to the stock pads. The new models now have Kool Stop pads which was a wise move. The old version of pads leave so much black brake dust, chews up your rims, make a terrible grinding sound, requires too much pressure on the brake levers to get decent stopping power.

RoboCheme

Thanks, folks. I put on the new pads and everything worked as normal. The new pads definitely improve stopping. The one thing that's kind of odd is that the toe end of the Kool Stop pads juts out toward the rim. To prevent the toe from rubbing, I adjusted the clearance so that the main body of the pad is quite far from the rim, almost to the point where the brake levers reach their compressed limit. I guess that I'll have to wait for this toe knob to wear off a bit and adjust the clearance again. It's only a problem on the rear brakes.

HillRider

The knob is called a "rim rake" and it is supposed to clear mud and water from the rim first. I don't think it's much of a benefit and you could sand it off. Also, if your pad holders can be adjusted for "toe in", you can angle them to reduce to effect of the projection. That's what I did on my bikes.

RoboCheme

Thanks, HillRider. I'll try sanding those knobs off. I think that the only way I can adjust the pad angle is to bend the calipers, which I'm not ready to do yet.