Posted on: April 17, 2021 Posted by: Robert H. Miller Comments: 0
Fix Dragging Brake Pads

If you sent her the hydraulic disc brakes on your bicycle, but you’re still getting brake drag. There are two possible reasons that we’ll look at in this article and I’ll give you a solution on how to solve.

Brake Fluid

The first one that we’ll look at is a stuck piston. The other one that we’ll look at is the possible expansion of the brake fluid in your system.

So especially with the dot fluid, it can actually expand if it gets a little bit of moisture in particularly if you live in a human environment, and in the case of hydraulic fluid, that has expanded, that is particularly problematic.

If you’re putting in new brake pads and it’s simply doesn’t have enough space between the pad and the rotor and that it can cause brake drag for both of the remedies that I’ll show you in this article, we need to remove the wheel.

Check your bike brakes and this is important to know how to tighten bike brakes easily.

Next, remove the brake pads, and sometimes you’ll have a little clip like this.

So just pop that off, usually with a pair of needles, nose pliers, and then typically you’ll have a little bolt going through the brake pads.

If pistons were actually stuck then retract the other one would stay out and that was causing a lot of problems with the brakes dragging.

Tire Level

What you need to do is just take a tire lever and just push that piston back in. Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to try to lubricate the seals.

Whether you have brakes that use fluid or mineral oil and repeat that about six times and that should take care of the stuck piston.

The other reason you might have brake drag is the fact that the hydraulic fluid inside the system has expanded and that causes the pistons to not retract fully.

This will work on whatever type of bike you have, whether it’s a road-type brake system or a mountain by the hydraulic brake system.

This can especially be a problem when you’re putting in a new brake pad.

Now you could do a complete bleed of the system and you will link an article down below of how to do that.

But in this case, all I’m going to do is remove this bleed port screw, and then I’m going to relieve some of the pressure from the system this will work on any type of brake system, whether it’s a road, mountain, deity, fluid, hydraulic fluid and in this case, you need to use a Torx.

First moving the pistons back in, in the case of a stuck piston. Now there’s less pressure in the system so you can move those pistons back in.

Any fluid that may still remain on the brake lever and the water or ice or propyl alcohol will neutralize any of the Dot fluid and that’s it.

Conclusion

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