you hi I'm Jean with performance bicycle and today we're going to make an adjustment on cantilever rim brakes the tools that you'll need for this adjustment are a 5 millimeter allen wrench a 3 millimeter allen wrench and an optional zip tie now the first thing you do before you make any adjustment on any brakes whether it's rim brakes or disc brakes is you need to make sure the wheels are in the dropouts all the way so I'm going to take this bike off the repair stand okay we're going to release the front quick-release make sure the wheels settle all the way in the dropouts and tighten the quick-release back up okay on the back wheel we're going to release the quick-release and we're going to lock it back into place and put the bike back up in the stand now we're going to make an adjustment on the brake pads themselves first thing I want to do is I want to release the cable from the brake or I can adjust the pads themselves we're going to take that optional zip tie and we're going to wrap it around the very back side of this brake pad on the front it can be a tight little squeeze there we go what this zip tie does is this zip tie creates a tow in for the brake pad now the reason why you want these brake pads to be towed in is you might be experiencing some squealing when you hit your brakes this tow-in will help take away some of that squealing next we're going to reattach the cable right up here and we're going to align the brake pad now we're going to take our five millimeter allen wrench I like using a three-way allen wrench this is a four five and six millimeter allen wrench it has a five millimeter on there course and I like using this because it just gives me a little bit better handle on making the adjustment I'm going to take the five millimeter and we're going to release this locking nut on here and we're going to push the pad up against the rim now we want to get the pad as high on the rim as we possibly can push up against there get as high as you can and make sure the front of the pad and the back of the pad this front section here and the back section here where's it is make sure that both of these are equal distance from the edge of the rim also we want to make sure that when we tighten this down that the pad is flat up against the rim that's hitting the rim solid instead of maybe the front edge hitting or the bottom edge hitting you're working against the spring on these so sometimes it's a little bit tight to lock that in we're going to do this make the same adjustment to the other brake pad also okay once you've made that adjustment release the cable again and remove the zip tie that you put on and attach your cable now after you've attached that up squeeze brake lever several times to make sure that both brake arms are moving the same distance and that the pads are moving off of the rim the same distance on both sides in this case it looks like this right arm is moving a little bit more than the left arm is but we're going to go ahead and make that adjustment going to take our three millimeter allen wrench in this case and we're going to make an adjustment to this little screw right here on the bottom okay this screw right here adjusts the spring tension on this particular arm when you screw this in it creates more spring tension and makes the arm deflect more we're going to squeeze the brakes a couple times and see if they're moving equally they're obviously they're not moving equally we have the right arm moving a little bit more than the left arm so what I'm going to do I'm going to go in here to this adjustment screw on the left arm and I'm going to use my three millimeter allen wrench and I'm going to screw this in a couple turns as you can see now they're balanced out quite a bit better it's uh it's not perfect but it's enough so where the wheel clears the the wheel clears the brake pads on both sides and that's what we're looking for make sure though that before you make any kind of adjustments like this that your wheels are true it's very important it'll make this adjustment quite a bit easier okay that's how you adjust cantilever brakes if you'd like to learn more visit our performance bicycle Learning Center or if you live near one of our performance bicycle shops come in and talk to one of our spin doctor mechanics and have a great ride