Rich Barnes

Ads by GoogleLocal 1-Day Coupons
Up To 90% Off The Best Stuff To Do!
Restaurants, Events, Food And More.
www. LivingSocial. comSmall problem with the Dia-Compe brakes on my Schwinn Traveler
Hi all -

I'm sure this is going to sound like a real newbie thing, but I'm not having any luck here.

I've got a Schwinn Traveler, with what I'm assuming to be the original brakes - Dia-Compe 500 is what's on the arms - on it. While trying to adjust the brakes a bit the other day, I managed to throw them completely out of whack, and now I can't get them to function properly again.

What it's doing now is this - if you squeeze the brake lever for the rear brakes, the brakes set but will not release. The brake lever gets a lot of play in it and jiggles around a lot. If you pull the brakes off the rim with your fingers, everything is fine - until you apply the brakes again, at which point they stay up against the rim, and the brake levers get lots of slack again.

I've tried adjusting the amount of cable sticking out of the bottom of the caliper, tried adjusting the barrel on top of the caliper.....nothing seems to get them to work right. (By the way, I'm stumped as to what I did to get them like this in the first place.) Anybody got any suggestions as to how to get this thing up and running again?

Thanks much for any help you can provide -

Rich

bikeman715

sound like you need new cable and housing . you have some dirt or rust in it which keeping the cable from moving freely . once you replace it everything will work again.

mechBgon

Given that the problem didn't start until you tried to work on them, you may have inadvertantly tightened the pivot bolt. Refer to "Double Nut Adjustment" at https://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-...-brake-service and see if that gets you on the right track.