Bike Forums - 1976 Raleigh Sprite Brakes sticking

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1976 Raleigh Sprite Brakes sticking

Hi, All.
I replaced the break pads on a Raleigh Sprite, and now they are sticking and rubbing against the rim. How do I fix that? Do I need to add tension to the cable? Please let me know. This is one of the last item to address on the banged up little Sprite that I rescued. It's a great little bike for my daughter. The other issue is the back wheel has some play in it. Is that the bearings being lose? If so, how do I tighten them?

thanks

By "sticking" do you mean that when you release pressure on the brake levers, the brake arms do not open sufficiently to clear the rim? As for the rear wheel, how much play are you talking about? A Raleigh rear wheel should have just a little bit of play.

Hey dweenk. Thanks for the speedy reply. Yes - the brake arms do not open sufficiently to clear the rim. They were close with the old pads, but I had to re-seat the wheel b/c it was rubbing against the frame. Now that the wheel is centered and there's new pads, I can pull the arms open and it's fine. However, after breaking once, they stay close to the rim and rub.

The play on the back wheel is noticeable. You can wiggle the whole big by moving the frame. I'd say there's more than a little.

You have 10 posts, so you can now upload pictures. Please do so, it's helpful and we like to look at them :)

For your brake, it could be a couple things.

1. Your cable is too short and needs to be let out a little.

2. Your cable has excessive friction and as a result the calipers do not fully release because the cable becomes stuck before relaxing to its zero tension position. Solved with any number of the following: new cables, new housing, making sure the cable has gentle bends from the lever to the caliper, taking the caliper apart and cleaning it.

As for your wheel, it could also be a few things as I'm not entirely sure what you mean by having some 'play'. Is the rim wobbly, or does the whole wheel knock about laterally when in the frame?

1. The spokes have relaxed over time and need to be tightened or loosened to 'true' the wheel. Check for this by sighting parallel to the rim's braking surface and spinning the wheel.

2. The rim itself is bent. No big deal, the quick solution is to true the wheel just like problem #1 . However, it almost certainly won't be able to become 100% perfectly true. To do that, you'd have to take apart the wheel and bend the rim, and then rebuild the wheel. I don't think that it's worth doing that for this bike unless the wheel is severely wobbly and is incapable of being trued.

3. The hub is loose, and needs to be tightened. You can check for this by rocking the wheel laterally while it's attached to the frame. If there's knocking, you need to get some cone wrenches and tighten up the hub until there is the barest hint of play when the wheel is off the frame, and disappears once installed on the bike.

Another cause for sticky brake calipers is that the center bolt is too tight. Without a pic of your brakes, it’s hard to advise on how to fix.

Hi All.
I got super busy at work right after I posted. I’ll take photos tomorrow and post them. Thanks everyone for your replies.

Problem could be in the lever as those “self adjusting” models were an awful design. I’d just try shooting ample amounts of WD-40 into the lever and the caliper, particularly where the brake arms pivot on the center bolt.

Hi, All.
Thanks for the recommendations. After showering it with some WD-40 and releasing some cable, it's working great. I agree those self adjusting levers are pretty awful. Good idea. Bad implementation. At some point, I'm going to take it all apart and clean it all up. It's a pretty nice bike (for a garbage pick :) )