Hi all

I'm not a bike person so excuse me if this is a blindingly obvious question - but my old man bought a folding bike a while back after a motoring accident to help him get moving again, but ended up buying himself a more suitable bike and basically not touching the folding one. I won't go into details of models and parts etc as it's a generic one.

He's asked me to flog it for him, and I notice that the front brake is stuck on, on one side. I unhooked the cable and noticed that there's no spring-back at all, it's just sort of floppy.

Am I right in thinking I should just get a new front brake? Do they tend to come in loads of different sizes or can I just get a general v-brake, unbolt the old, bolt on the new, adjust, and we're away?

Something like this perhaps? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BLACK-V-BR...item2565cfac8d

Pics for clarity, cheers
Matt

Look at the back side of your brake caliper. Usually there's a wire finger from the brake sticking straight up. It has to hook behind a little nub. If the spring is broken or the nub is missing I'd replace the whole caliper. Otherwise the little screw that's visible near the pivot can be tightened to increase the return spring tension.

+1, just buy a new caliper pair, there are a wide price range offered these days..

in the Shop, we are bending those springs all the time to attempt balanced actuation.

Cheers for the reply mate.

The back side of it looks just like the others really - and I've tightened the screw as much as possible and it's made no difference really; it's just flopping about.

Can we assume the spring is knackered from this?

thanks
Matt

You could also remove the brake from its stud and confirm that the protruding tip of the spring is, in fact, anchored in the hole on the fork's brake stud. But those are very low-quality brakes (stamped steel) and I would waste very little effort on them when you can have nice Shimano Aceras for cheap.

V brakes separate the spring in 2 sections, so that screw has effect.
one in the frame boss hole,
the other positioned, against the other end of the screw.

Exception, Pauls Comp,
they use the same return spring mech thru out their brake offerings..

A US company , so not cheap.. to make things in California.

they cost more than you probably paid for the bike..

So is size an issue or are they just standardised?

Matt

There do exist "stubby" V-brakes aimed at specific niche markets, so no they're not 100% standardized.

I've put Forte brakes similar to these on a couple of bikes. Perfectly adequate braking for not many bucks.
https://www.performancebike.com/bikes...egoryId=400927

Probably similar to what you linked to. V-brakes are easy to install and adjust.

Ok well with niche markets being an exception in most cases, that would imply that generally there's not a huge range of different sizes - thanks again for the comments gents I'll get right on it.

thanks
Matt