Kontact 

Yes, unwrapping the bar tape near the stem about 2-3 inches will create the slack you need. You might have trouble pealing the old tape back, but if you can then just re-tape leaving the cable sticking out of a gap. Or leave it bare. When you are ready to get some maintenance done you can replace the cable and tape AND stem or bars to get the fit better. Or you can decide it isn't the right bike and pass it on as is.

conspiratemus1

If the cable housing being too short (which it is) was the cause, wouldn't it pull the brake caliper over the other way?
I would ask the OP, is the brake caliper just not centred, but otherwise opens and closes smoothly, or is it sticky where the right arm (left as you look at your photo) doesn't want to come off the rim at all and is hard to squeeze closed and pull open with your bare hands. (Front wheel may need to be removed to test this properly.) Also is cable running smoothly in the housing? No centering technique will work properly if there is stiction anywhere in the brake from lever to arms.

Kontact 

The OP's direction descriptions are backwards from the bike directions, but they say that the side with the tight housing is not moving and the side with the wire is. Which is what would happen if the housing can't move.

This is 100% the problem. However, now that it has been used like that the brake might need to be re-centered after some slack is added.

blamester

If the cable was too short would it not be the other pad that is too close?
Edit
Sorry I didn't realise this has been pointed out.
And by the way those brakes work much better with non aero levers as they where originally designed for.

Steel Charlie

Give a man a plane ticket and he will fly one time. Throw a man out of an airplane and he will fly for the rest of his life

Thousands people used sidepull brakes for decades. There is nothing wrong with them. Dual pivots are nicer and easier to adjust. Nothing installs or adjusts itself.

conspiratemus1

Respectfully I have to disagree with what I think you are saying. The OPs cable housing is clearly too short, no question. But it would be trying to pull the right shoe away from the rim and push the left shoe into the rim so it won't come off, opposite to what we see in his photos. (Yes he has used the opposite right-left convention to what we are used to, but no matter.) The short cable housing is not causing the mis-centering of his brakes.

Today I loosened the stem of one of my secondary bikes to make sure the stem hadn't gotten stuck and the grease was OK. The photos show the brakes properly centred with the stem locked down, then with the stem pulled up so far it almost comes out of the steerer -- the cable housing is so tight by then the stem wouldn't actually come all the way out -- then two more photos to show the calipers re-centred with the stem pushed back down and re-tightened, one photo from each side because in the initial-state photo you can't see the pad-rim clearance. No tools were used on the brake calipers. The movement you see is just the natural swing of the mechanism. (Note you can see that I originally actually did cut this housing too short -- it might have been reused from some other bike -- and I extended it with the small piece of red housing you see just above the housing stop on the caliper.)


Start. Caliper centred.


Stem all the way up. Arrow shows left pad contacting rim.


Stem back down and tightened, showing left pad-rim clearance


Stem back down and tightened, showing right pad-rim clearance. Bike position flipped to take advantage of sunlight.

Takeaway: I had to raise the stem all the way up so the housing was pulled taught to get the left pad to stick against the rim. And my pads start out really close to the rim. But my cable housing was the right length (I think) to begin with. Even though the OP's housing is too short, as we all agree, it is not the sole cause of the caliper failing to centre because it is off-centre in the wrong direction. The first thing the OP needs to do is fit cable housing of proper length, then follow the trouble-shooting process described in this thread. But just lengthening the cable housing so it has a nice comfy curve will not by itself centre his brake.

Kontact 

The OP isn't moving his stem up and down, he's pulling the brake lever. Doing so is going to cause the brake pads to try and touch the rim, but the pad connected to the caliper arm with the barrel adjuster is unable to move because the housing is too short to let that arm move down. So the only way for anything to move is for the other arm to move twice as much.

The fact that you are trying to simulate this with right side front brake is probably not helping you, since it never gets totally straight and tight.

conspiratemus1

But the OP isn't pulling his brake lever in his photos. I raised my stem just to simulate a cable housing that was too short and examined what that did to the resting position of the calipers. His photo of the off-centre caliper is with the bike standing on the floor. If he is pulling the lever in his first photo while standing in front of the bike that is not stated or apparent. In the second photo he clearly isn't. The resting off-centreness is in the wrong direction for it to be caused by the housing being too short. What happens when he does pull the lever with too-short cable housing is another story which I don't think the OP has given me enough information to comment on further. (When I realized that the front housing of my bike was too short, I didn't bother trying to see what happens when I applied the lever because the mistake was apparent even before I tried to hook it up. With a reasonable curve in the housing it wouldn't reach, especially with the bit of extra length you need to allow the caliper to move downward as the lever is pulled, [Edit: as you point out.]) I grant you are right that some weird things happen when you try to apply the front brake when the cable housing is far too short.


Cable housing never gets straight and tight, no matter how hard you pull the levers. That's how Bowden cables work. The housing compresses when the cable is put under tension and stays curved. All my brakes are right front and they all work fine. I'm not trying to simulate anything. I just like right (smart) hand for front brake...even though there is less room for error in getting a nice smooth sweep of cable from the right side of the bar to the right side of the brake, especially with the housing under the bar tape. Much easier with old-fashioned exposed loopy cables.

Kontact 

Again, you are misunderstanding. The bar has been raised to the point that the housing is pulled straight in a diagonal line between the right side of the brake and the left handlebar. That has nothing to do with lever pulling. But once the lever is pulled, the housing has no slack to follow the caliper arm down.

I've been working on bikes professionally since the OPs brakes were new. I have seen this many, many times. It only happens on left hand levers because you can't pull up a right hand lever handlebar hard enough without kinking the housing beyond repair or tearing the handlebar tape.

FBinNY 

God help me, I oughta get my head examined for coming back to this pointless argument. But here goes.....

Kontact may be right, or not depending on the details.

Hypothetically, the cable length MIGHT be an exact length, such that it reaches the arm with zero slack, and without pulling it up either. Then when the brake is used, it lacks the slack needed for the upper arm to move down.

Any shorter, and the brake would be pulled out of position, any longer and we wouldn't be here.

BUT we don't have to argue about it. The OPs stem clearly was raised from where it had been for a while (evidenced by the discolored band).

So rather than argue, let's wait until the OP lowers the stem and reports if or not it changes anything.

conspiratemus1

Perhaps you don't care, but that is one of the surest ways to alienate someone you are trying (or seem to be trying) to have a discussion with. It's right up there with, "Read again, with comprehension this time."
Cheers.

Kontact 

I'm sorry, my priority is helping people fix their bikes and quell the multitude of voices making erroneous suggestions.

I am not seeking a mentorship role and explaining how things work over and over to people with little practical experience is not a "discussion" but a chore.

In this case you aren't even acknowledging the basic concept and then trying to disprove it with a bike set up in a way that can't malfunction the same way. So arguing with you is no more rewarding for me then explaining how vaccines work to someone who thinks COVID is fake. No thank you.

You have all the information necessary to understand. Figure it out or not. I don't need to know.

SkinGriz

It doesn’t matter if they move evenly.

It only matters if the pads on both sides don’t rub when you release the brakes.

You can adjust them to make this happen, but in a few days or whatever they will be back to one side slightly rubbing.

It just seems to be the nature of single pivot brakes.

Kontact 

This would be useful advice if the OP's cable housing wasn't too short to allow proper function.

Steel Charlie

That is simply not true. Properly installed and adjusted side pull brakes do not de-adjust. I rode Campagnolo, Shimano, Suntour, side pulls for several decades and never had a problem. Look to something else than the mechanism for the source of the difficulty.

RoadWearier

Well I cut the tape to see if it helped and it did a bit. But I found the cables have actually been internally routed through holes in the bars!
This is weird because...


So I guess these aren't the original bars.


I didn't have time to center them...didn't know about the bolt behind the frame so I'll do that tomorrow. I'd send video of the calipers contracting but I don't seem able to

FBinNY 

If you didn't push the bars back down a half inch or so, do it now!!!!

The past and prior changes don't matter unless you're a collector. Your objectives should be to identify the current problem, determine its cause, fix it, and move on.

Creating slack in the cable by lowering the bars will confirm whether it's shortness is the issue or not. Either way, it's critical info you'll need to move past this.

Trakhak

Exactly right. Always eliminate the obvious/easy possibilities first.

smd4

Buy a new set of bars without holes; buy some new bar tape and buy some new compressionless housing and cables. Re-do everything properly. This is a start-from-scratch type of solution that seems necessary here.

wheelreason

fify

RoadWearier

Whats wrong with the pedals? I know they are cheap but flats are flats, no?

What would you replace them with, and why?

smd4

The pedals are fine. Take the suggestion about dual pivots.

Kontact 

Good single pivot brakes work fine.

RoadWearier

I appreciate all of the insight and input. I'm thinking I will wait until winter. The short cable may be an issue but truthfully after wd-40 and 50 miles the caliper seems to be moving more freely so maybe it was just dirt and dis-use. I really like the bike so if I still have it in December, I probably have a bike shop add a taller stem (right now I can't raise or lower it, possible frozen), maybe have them change to a dual pivot brakes while I am there. Any idea what that would cost, all in? If it's more than $200 I might just try a different bike.

smd4

Compared to dual pivots, no, they don’t.