Originally Posted by
icemilkcoffee
Originally Posted by
walterbyrd
. I have to unhook my brakes to take my tire off - and that will probably cause me to have to re-adjust the brakes?
You have to do that with any cable brakes to take off the wheel. You should not have to re-adjust anything afterwards.
I think he's talking about the straddle cable; which is exactly how you release the brakes for clearance to remove the wheel; that's why it has that knarp on one end. Unless you have your 'return' position on your brakes set wider than the width of your tire, it's the only way; particularly on 1.9"-2.1" MTB tires.
V's do the same thing, you just pull the Noodle back out of the left side arm to release the arms, no tools required.
Not an uncommon occurance on early 1990s MTBs: the frame spacing was so tight, that even with the brake arms all the way to the frame, you'd still have to let the air out of your tire to squeeze it between the pads. (my Klein is like this and it's not exactly a cheap bike)
My guess is that the OP's Costco bike has crappy cheap brakes on it, which compound the difficulty of getting them set right, especially if you don't really know what you're doing.
A $20 set of Tektro V's would probably be a worthwhile upgrade over whatever is on it now.