Racing season starts tomorrow. Maybe. The DINO Tune Up is set to kick off at 2 pm. Unfortunately, rain is supposed to start at midnight. So....the event is doubtful as of now.
But, since it is race week and I like going down to the wire on my bike maintenance, I decided to overhaul my race bike this week. So, Tuesday and Wednesday I broke the bike down and cleaned and greased everything. The bike is almost looking new. "Cause that is what you do when the race day forecast calls for lots of rain.
But the problem was the new Deore XT disc brakes I bought to upgrade my existing SLX. Why the upgrade? Well, the XT's are shinier. And I think that was it. Brakes should be a simple thing. Eh, not so much. Here is how it went down.
Wednesday Night: Remove old brakes, inspect old pads...or what remains of old pads. Pat myself on the back for getting new, potentially better brakes (at least shinier) with new brand new pads. Set old brakes aside and work on other parts of the bike.
Thursday Night, approx. 8 pm: Begin to install new brakes. Note that there seems to be a lot of extra cable. Shrug my shoulders and assume things will work out when everything is routed properly.
Thursday Night, approx. 8:20 pm: Something is definitely off. This is way too much cable. Look at box...and front cable is 1000 mm and rear is 1300 mm. Remove front brake and compare to old SLX front brake....wow, quite a bit of difference. The SLX is much shorter. Same with the rear brake.
Thursday Night, approx. 8:30 pm: Try to rationalize to myself that the extra cable doesn't look that bad, that it won't get caught on trail side debris, that my number plate will cover most of it up. Ok, I can live with this.
Thursday Night, approx. 9 pm: What is that liquid around the rear brake mount? Is that mineral oil? Shit, it is. I loosened the wrong thing and some oil escaped. It may have gotten on the rotor and pad.....
Friday Morning, 5:30 am: Test ride the rebuilt bike. All works well. Except for the rear brake. Which doesn't work at all. Contamination? Maybe. And the cabling looks terrible. Sigh.
Friday Evening, 7:45 pm: Time to resolve this. Clean rotors and pads. Still dealing with cabling. Found instructions to shorten the cables, but decide to keep that until another day. But hey, the XT's have new pads...and my SLX's don't need to be bled.
Friday Evening, 8 pm: SLX brakes are re-mounted, with new pads from XT's. Test ride show they work great. Might just keep these on all season. Still have new set of XT's with far too long cables. But they sure are shiny.
So things worked out. My bike is clean and ready to be destroyed by almost two hours of racing in the mud and rain. Unless the race is cancelled in which case I'm watching Game of Thrones all day.
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