On 7/27/2017 8:30 AM, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:21:03 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/26/2017 7:05 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:40:49 PM UTC-4, sms wrote:
The brakes on my Specialized road bike were not opening all the way when
releasing the brake levers. At first I thought it was the old brake
cables having corrosion so I replace them, and I also put on a set of
new/used levers, since the springs in the original levers were weak, but
this wasn't sufficient.

Snipped
How often should I have to replace brake springs. Since this road
bicycle is about 30 years old I figure that the springs do fatigue over
time.

I think this is what I wanted:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DIA-COMPE-S-PULL-BRAKE-PART-SPRING-/282571492776?hash=item41ca92cda8:g:LiIAAOSwUFtZaPk c

How often? NEVER! Just unhook each side of the spring from the caliper arm and then bend the brake spring upwards away from the caliper arm to increase the tension of the spring and you'd be set for many more years of use. The shop ripped you off by selling you new brake calipers you did NOT need.


Right. Besides which the most common problems are dirt/crud
or a bent inner arm.
Dissassemble, clean everything, oil or grease all mating
parts and reassemble such that arms move freely without any
fore/aft slop. Lock adjustment, hook the spring ends in and
you're good for many years.
Bent arms on that class of brake are very easily reshaped.
Hold in aluminum vise jaws, rectify with a crescent wrench
and a straightedge.

Wouldn't you think that after 30 years that it is likely that the spring is rusted and dragging against itself? If you clean the spring of it's rust you still have the pitting which reduces the action of the spring.


In theory maybe but I've never seen that in real life. Rust
is ugly but in terms of % reduction of cross section of a
spring, it's meaningless.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971