44. How To Adjust your Child's 1st Hand Brake
Adjust the brake lever reach and spring tension to work for small hands.
IMPORTANT: Nuts and bolts on your bike should always be tightened to the manufacturer's specifications.
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In this tutorial we’ll learn how to set up your child's first hand brake. Often the excitement of getting a new bike with a hand brake quickly turns to disappointment when your child tries to use it, only to find the lever is too far from the handlebar and hard to pull. On most children’s bikes this is easy to fix.
Tools
For this job you’ll most often need a 10mm wrench to adjust the brake cable bolt, and a small metric allen key or phillips (+) screwdriver for the lever’s reach adjustment. When adjusting cables it also makes things a lot easier if you have a 4th hand cable puller. We’ll assume your brake pivot and pads are already adjusted as explained in the sidepull caliper tutorial. Search the site for “How To Adjust Sidepull Caliper Brakes” to learn more about this style of brakes.
Lever Adjustment
First you’ll need to loosen off your brake cable bolt. You don’t need to remove it completely. This will allow you to adjust the brake lever’s reach. On the lever you should see a screw or bolt on the inside close to the handlebar. This is the reach adjustment screw. As you turn this screw you’ll notice the lever move closer to the handlebar grip. Turn it just enough so you child can easily reach the lever, but not too far, as it still needs to be able to move enough to pull the brake.
Now re-adjust and tighten your brake cable. This is where the 4th hand tool comes in handy, as it will grip and pull the cable for you while you tighten the bolt.
Reach Adjustment
Once the reach is set up and the brakes are working, your child may find the lever is close enough but hard to pull. This is caused by high spring tension on the back of the brake caliper. To relieve some of this tension, you can push the spring in toward the wheel on both sides. I use an old screwdriver that I’ve ground down to a have a concave end just for this purpose, so it doesn’t slip and gouge my knuckles. Push just enough so it gives a tiny bit. You don’t want to push the springs too much as they still need some tension to pull the brakes back outward.
Recommended Books:
- Zinn & MTB
Mountain Bikes: Maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting. - Zinn & Road
Road Bikes: Maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting. - Sutherland's Manual
Sutherland's handbook for bicycle mechanics on CD-ROM. - Park Blue Book
Hundreds of photos and hundreds of procedures.
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8 Responses to “How To Adjust your Child's 1st Hand Brake”
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and oh, if you have a maintenance/repair question, please ask in the help forums.
Recommended Tools:
- Hozan 4th Hand
Grasps the inner cable and pulls it tight. - Pro Hex Wrenches
Park HXS-1 L-shaped quality hex wrench set. 2mm - 10mm - Metric Wrenches
The MW-SET includes 6mm to 15mm box/open end wrenches. - Park Screwdrivers
Four shop grade screwdrivers in one handy set. - Starter Tool Kit
11 genuine Park Tool products & a custom Park Tool toolbox. - Advanced Tool Kit
The AK-37 includes all the most frequently used tools.
Glad to see some new tutorials! Also glad you offer RSS as I get notifications in my reader for all new posts!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your e-mail yes I am fine thanks and you. It’s great to see you back on the tutorials I will be looking forward to every one of them they are very professional and it is one of the best sites on the internet for bike fixing.
If any one said to me they wanted to go on a bike mechanics course I would direct them to your site first you can not get the same information with bike mechanics course that you offer on your site.
It is also one of the best to educate people how to fix there own bike.
Regards Anthony.
Yay, a new video! I send customers from my store to your website all the time. Glad to see the library’s expanding again. Can it be that the addition of a little one explains the longtime gap and the choice of subject??
Cable disc brake adjustment next! (please and thanks)
It is great to be making tutorials again, thanks for all the support!
@Nick: No little ones lol. Just took some time off to focus on other projects last year. A few people requested this tutorial. The cable disc tutorial is on the way, but probably not for a while as I don’t have a bike with them yet
Hey Alex awesome Tutorial. Noticed the customized screw driver you used, I’ll probably make one because sure there will be a time come across some of those style of brake assemblies.
Good idea on the customized tool. Not so good on releasing the brake cable. It is usually not needed. What is often needed is truing the wheel after adjusting the lever inward as that reduces the amount of cable travel. The closer brake pads will then often contact the out-of-true rim. Lubricate the brake pivot and cable before reducing tension on the brake spring. I can’t remember ever having to reduce spring tension on a child’s bike. What I have done is lubricate cable and housing if there is excess friction in the system (often due to a completely housed cables found on department store bikes). I’ve been doing this for 40 years.
Really good tutorial, thanks loads. Particularly on adjusting the amount of force required … I had adjusted the reach but when i saw how you adjusted the spring it sorted my problem…
Came across your site via search engine and am so glad that I did! Following your tutorial I was able to adjust the brake levers on my daughter’s bike so she can now reach them. She is happy and so am I.