Dual Success!

After my failed attempt to adjust the deraileur on my Speedster, I've been hesitant to try anything new in the world of bicycle repair. However, the gravel spread all over Clouser Road meant that I should really replace the rear tire on my Schwinn.

Of course, I've changed tires before - pretty regularly, in fact. But while I was in the garage changing the tire on the road bike, I got inspired and decided to adjust the brake cables on my mountain bike.

GASP!

After successfully mountain the replacement tire (Continental Ultra Gatorskin) on the Schwinn, realizing that I had it on backwards (the "direction of rotation" arrows were pointing the wrong way), taking it off and remounting it correctly, I grabbed a hex wrench and started fiddling with the mountain bike.

The brake handle for the front brake pulls all the way down before it's really effective, so I decided to pull the cable a little further through the anchor bolt to tighten it up a bit. I loosened the anchor bolt, pulled the cable about 1/4 inch through and tightened it again. Success! Nothing went wrong! I used the adjusting barrel to fine tune it and voila! My brakes were re-tuned in less than two minutes!

I was so stoked, I did the same on the rear brake. I spun the tire to check it out and it stopped almost immediately. Seems I tightened it a bit too much. No worries, just a quick adjustment and I had that fixed too.

So not only did I fix a problem with my bike, I also fixed a problem that I caused by trying to fix something that wasn't a problem. Dual success!