Almost Everything You Need to Know About Mountain Bike Brakes
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2017
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Singletracks podcast, Aaron, Greg, and I share (almost) everything you need to know about mountain bike brakes. We start by talking about the history of mountain bike brakes then discuss braking techniques, pad selection, maintenance tips, and a whole lot more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. |
| 0:08.3 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. |
| 0:16.3 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.1 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Jeff and today Aaron and Greg and I are going to |
| 0:27.1 | attempt to tell you everything you need to know about mountain bike brakes, or at least almost everything. |
| 0:33.1 | So we're going to start out talking about the history of brakes on mountain bikes. |
| 0:43.2 | And for those who know their mountain bike history, you'll remember that the original mountain bikes were actually cruiser bikes, clunkers that were fixed up. |
| 0:48.4 | And these bikes actually had brakes that were called coaster brakes. |
| 0:52.3 | Aaron, what can you tell us about coaster brakes? Well, if you had a bike as a little kid, it probably called coaster brakes. Aaron, what can you tell us about coaster brakes? |
| 0:55.1 | Well, if you had a bike as a little kid, it probably had coaster brake on it, which is, |
| 0:59.6 | you know, you pedal backwards to stop. So it's awesome for doing really sweet skids. |
| 1:05.1 | But that's about it. You don't have a ton of modulation or anything with a coaster brake. |
| 1:09.6 | It's just, you know, pretty much on or off. |
| 1:12.7 | Right. And mountain bikers realized pretty quickly that those weren't great for mountain biking |
| 1:17.7 | because they tended to really overheat, especially when you're doing downhill on a mountain bike. |
| 1:23.3 | And that's actually how they got the name for one of the original, I guess the original mountain bike race called repack. |
| 1:31.8 | And it's because they had to repack the bearings in those coaster brakes after every run down the hill. |
| 1:37.0 | So coaster brakes not well suited to mountain bikes. |
| 1:40.6 | Pretty soon people started putting rim brakes on their mountain bikes. And those have, obviously, |
| 1:47.3 | have some advantages over coaster brakes, but there's also some disadvantages. So Greg, what do |
| 1:52.2 | you know about rim brakes? Well, rim brakes, essentially, you know, the brake pad contacts the |
| 1:57.3 | rim on the mountain bike. And, you know, you don't have the issues of boiling off your |
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