Stop!

Dear reader,

It was all going so well. The bottom bracket was in, cranks attached, and I fitted the front and rear derailleurs (more on all of that later). I'd bought the wheels (again, more on them later), fitted the tyres (ditto), and the bare frame was gradually beginning to look like a proper bike.

Then I tried to fit the brakes.

First, some background. The brakes I'm fitting to the bike are caliper brakes. If you've previously ridden mountain or hybrid bikes, you may not have seen these - disc or V-brakes tend to be more popular on those. Here's what they look like:

When fitted, a wire runs down the left hand side of the brake, from the bolt on the top to the one on the left. When you pull the brake lever, the arm on the left moves, pulling the brake shoes (the black bits) against the metal rim of your wheel.

Well, that's the theory, anyway. Here's the problems I encountered, in turn:

1. Fitting the right brake at the right end of the bike
Those two brakes above look pretty similar, don't they? So you can fit whatever one you want on the back and the front, right?

Wrong.

Caliper brakes are fitted to your forks (at the front) and frame (at the back) by a single bolt right in the centre, at the highest point of the body of the brake. You can just about see these bolts in the picture above.

There'll be matching holes front and back on your bike. Here's what the one at the front looks like:

Just slip the bolt through the hole, fasten a nut on it at the other side, make sure it's nice and tight, and you're done.

Except you're not. The hole in your fork is going to be deeper than the one at the back of your frame, and caliper brakes come with bolts whose lengths match those depths. This caught me out, and I mistakenly tried to fit the front brake to the back.

No harm done, it didn't fasten properly, so I took it off and fitted them the right way round. Done yet? No.

2. Variations in bolt length
For different combinations of brake and frame, the bolts may or may not be exactly the length you need to get a good, tight fit that keeps the brake nice and steady. As it turns out, for a Genesis Equilibrium frame and Shimano Tiagra brakes, the bolts are slightly too long, which makes it difficult (if not impossible) to tighten them properly.

This problem, too, was easily enough solved. I just got some little washers from Homebase, slipped a couple on the bolts before I put them through the holes, and fastened the nuts. The brakes were fastened nice and tight, but still something didn't look right ...

3. Brake drop
When I pushed the arms of the brakes together, so that they contacted the wheel, I noticed they were hitting more tyre than they were rim. This was rather frustrating.

I noticed a couple of bolts holding the brake shoes tight, so I undid them and tried to fiddle around with the shoe positions to get more contact with the rim. No joy.

It turns out that the Tiagra brakes are just plain incompatible with the Equilibrium frame - which nicely explains why the pre-built Equilibriums don't come with them as standard. The fundamental problem is something known as brake drop.

Brake drop is the distance from the middle of the bolt hole in your fork or frame, to the middle of your wheel's rim. On typical road bikes, the brake drop is around 47mm. This is what the Tiagra brakes are built for. On the Equilibrium, the brake drop is around 57mm, which essentially means that the brake shoes on the Tiagra brakes can't ever reach down far enough to hit enough of the rim.

The solution? Stick the Tiagra brakes on eBay (still to do, I've never sold anything on eBay ... scary!) and buy some deep drop brakes, which do have a brake drop of 57mm. I've gone for Tektro 538 brakes, which should do the trick nicely.

Step 0. Oil

Before we begin on any of the maintenance itself, it's worth spending a little time talking about oil.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net, photographer m_bartosch

Clearly, the oil used on bikes isn't the delicious treat above, but nor is it oil in the form we probably think of it as ... a dark, gloopy substance. Indeed, I think I'm probably the only person who still calls it oil. It's actually lube, and there are a variety of different types for different bits of your bike. I'd list some of them here, but I don't actually know what they all are yet, let alone explain the differences.

The one thing they all have in common is that they get everywhere. If ever you're doing any work on your bike, assume that anything you touch other than the handlebars, saddle and levers will have some form of lube on them. It seems to me that the attitude towards lube of people who service bikes is very similar to that of the people who make sandwiches for supermarkets towards mayonnaise - if in doubt, slap in a good helping of it. (The difference of course being that bike lube is much more appetising than mayonnaise.)

All that said, specific points to note are:

1. Whenever you're doing work on your bike, make sure you're wearing clothes that it won't matter if they get dirty. Overalls you've used for decorating would be a good choice.
2. All the grimy dirty stuff that sticks to the lube also has an affinity for sticking under your fingernails far more strongly than you'd expect. Save yourself a lot of scrubbing by buying a pack of disposable latex or vinyl gloves. They're not expensive and you should be able to get them in a nearby supermarket without too much difficulty.
3. Remember what side your chain is on! If you're lifting your bike, or reaching around it, you want to avoid coming into contact with your chain. It's the most lubed and grubbiest bit of the bike.
4. If you've got a shed or an area outside to work on your bike, that's the best bet. If you do have to bring it inside, be very very careful what it touches! Specifically, if you have to push it up stairs (which I did for many, many years) check that the bottom of the chain doesn't rub against the floor when you take it up or down the last step.

Alan.