How To Change Your Road Brake Calipers And Set Up Your Brakes

Making sure your bike's brakes work correctly is possibly the most important maintenance you can do.

Without working brakes you'll very quickly come a cropper! We look at how to change your Shimano road brake calipers, adjust so your brake blocks to fit the new calipers and make sure that they are hitting the braking surfaces correctly.

We will cover how to change your brake pads next week in a separate video.

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The Global Cycling Network puts you in the centre of the action: from the iconic summit of the Stelvio to the epic trails of Fort William, Scotland, everywhere there is pavé or dirt, world-class racing, and pro riders, we will be there bringing you all the action, essential analysis and unparalleled access every week, every month, and every year.

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Music licensed by Cue Songs
Music - licensed by Cue Songs

[vicentegil]

thanks the heavens. i just watched the howcast video on installing brakes and the guy seemed unsure which made me unsure. thank you for the confidence in your videos.

[everest]

Thanks. I just owned my very first road bicycle and had no idea how to correctly set up the brake caliper. I only know how to work on cantilever brake and disc


Thank you very much for this video so I can adjust my bicycle at any point I feel necessary.

[lucasbluecas]

first let me say im a big fan of GCN!
Dan says: "turning the screw anti-clockwise will rotate the caliper clockwise and turning it anti-clockwise will do the opposite"

[gcn]

I thought I'd replied to this comment already, sorry! That's on the list. It'll be a tricky one to do but I think we can give some good pointers.

[gcn]

That's coming up next Monday - they are two slightly different things, so we separated them out so people looking for each thing find the right one.

[Mordiiax]

Helped me alot for my first caliper replacement, thumbs up :)

[merijndebeen]

Now I'd love to see a vid about changing the brake cables, with internal routing..

[peters]

Good video! Just bought a new set of brakes for my bike, there Campagnolo but im sure there isnt much difference

[KidFury]

Great video. I am always terrible with brake work. Toeing them seems to be hardest.

[RichChh]

GCN, I think you turned anti-clockwise twice when fine tuning the position of the brakes. See from 1:47

[trevormoore]

PLEASE CHECK YOUR REACH BEFORE BUYING A NEW CALIPER


You guys should update your video to include caliper reach, just bought a used road caliper for my wife's city bike and because the fenders I need a reach of 65mm and the road calipers I bought from craigslist are the typical 49mm max reach. I love your videos but now I will have resell and buy the correct caliper. All the best, thanks for the videos, I watch them regularly

P.S.
Try picking up the pace a little... I mean a full 2 and half minutes to learn how to properly adjust brakes?!?!? Who has time for that LOL. Please note my sarcasm here, I would appreciate if I could follow and perform the task on the video without hitting pause. But then again I am slow MTB guy at heart (head?) ha ha

[lucasturner]

Can you guys do a video on how to adjust the new bontrager integrated brakes? My new 7.9 brakes are really sensitive and I have a hard time getting them in just right.

[tonatiuhman]

Thanks for the vid. I was wondering how many of those toothed washers are needed and in what order are they assembled to the frame? Cheers

[jinky]

Nice one GCN.
How about 'How To True a Wheel'?

[paulsaid]

0:19 I need that tool. Can you tell me how is that tool and number of it called please?

[RickNance]

I have a 1976 masi gran crit I'm trying to fit newer chorus or record brakes on. The brake bolts they come with are too big for the frame's shaft. Is there a way around this? Your video confirmed I wasn't doing anything obviously stupid to this point. Not-so-obvious is still a question.

[ebigarella]

Global Cycling Network, is it necessary to apply thread locker to the centering screw? I have a shimano 561 brake on my bike and I have the impression that it is loosening sometimes. In this brake model, the centering screw is on the top left of the brake caliper. Thanks!

[Beachbumartist]

Is there a difference between road brakes and V brakes ? Thank you

[Do_not_assume]

Can you please post a video showing how to measure the caliper depth, drop size. I don't want to buy the wrong size calipers.

[eosme]

what about toe-in for the brake pads for carbon rims? do you have a video on that?